


A Nation in Ashes

by Mr_A_Firebender



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fire Nation (Avatar), Fire Nation Politics (Avatar), Gen, Original Character(s), Worldbuilding, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25945762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mr_A_Firebender/pseuds/Mr_A_Firebender
Summary: The Hundred Year War is over. The Fire Nation was brutally beaten into submission.The new Fire Lord must deal with politics, unrest, and lots and lots of plotting if he wants to wake up the next day. Lots of people want him dead. He has no allies.But Zuko isn't one to buckle under pressure.
Relationships: Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Zuko & The Fire Nation (Avatar)
Kudos: 76





	1. Birthright

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: This was a one-shot, but now it's going to be a series. 
> 
> This is a one-shot set in the same universe as 'Wacky Adventures of the Earth Empress', but following Fire Lord Zuko right after the titular Empress sails home.
> 
> You don't need to have read that to understand this, though.
> 
> If people like this, I'll write more of it.
> 
> If you liked this, give a comment! 
> 
> I accept prompts!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not used to writing in third person, or this short. I prefer writing in first-person, and having chapters that are ~8k long. This one shot is an attempt to try at third person.
> 
> After reading this, please tell me if you'd rather read more short third person stories like this, or first-person.

**Birthright**

He took a long time in the shower. A shower the size of a peasant’s hovel. A shower stacked with a hundred kinds of soaps and fragrances. Walls only one person would ever look at were adorned with rich crimson tilework. A gold dragon ran along the ceiling. A design that took months to perfect, a design that only one person would ever look at. He hadn’t had this luxury… ever. He blinked a few times, trying to take in each little piece of gold inlaid artistry. 

When he emerged again, the waiting attendants fell into full peasant-to-royalty bows. He walked into his dressing chamber, _he had a dressing chamber_ , whereupon he sat and watched the elaborate outfit of the Fire Lord to be brought out. The walls had murals of tropical beaches with dormant volcanoes forming a spiked ridge in the background. Such a peaceful mural for the chamber of one person who’d never bother to enjoy it. Except… he did. 

He was dressed in the long red and black robes of the Fire Lord. A robe that was meant to exude power. Excuse absolute control over the Fire Nation. Absolute power over all who the Fire Lord wished to rule. His hair was done into a topknot by a servant. She stuck the, all things considered, quite simple headpiece of the Fire Lord into his head and secured it with an equally simple golden cap. Nobody would ever question the simplicity of the piece, though.

He sat on a chair made of rich mahogany and inlaid with golden trim. He sat there, unsure of what to do next. One servant offered him a cup of water. His hands shook from the full weight of what was happening. The servant retracted the goblet. A few days ago, he was but a man with a claim. A claim he’d never thought would come to fruition. 

* * *

_The Fire Nation will win_. He’d convinced himself of that even as the ships destroyed the garrison fleet east of the Great Gates.

 _The Fire Nation always does_. He said that to himself, even as earthen artillery opened up on the city.

 _Azula will show up and burn the attackers._ He said that to himself, even as thousands of soldiers poured into the Lower City.

 _The Shogun will muster an army and repel them_. He’d thought that to himself, even when the news came that they’d broken through all the trenches. 

_The Fire Nation does not lose_ , he’d told himself that even when the stories came.

The tyrannical Shogun was dead. He had drawn his own blade and cut his stomach open but moments before capture. His sister Azula was presumed dead. Surely, the attackers wouldn't spare her.

The tyrant only had a few thousand defenders, but he made the Earth Kingdom pay tenfold for every _sun_ they crossed. City blocks were defended by cadets and the elderly armed with old crossbows and their firebending. The invaders fell upon the city with artillery, tanks, biplanes, earthbenders, and human waves.

A hundred thousand Earth soldiers had repaid the Fire Nation’s war crimes with a sack to the scale the world had never seen.

_She’d_ told him she’d take his throne for him, which is why, when he finally arrived on the back of his uncle’s pet dragon, he was shocked to see that she was sitting on her own throne a few _shaku_ in front of the Dragon Throne, picking her toes. She, a noblewoman from the continent that they’d been invading and oppressing for a hundred and thirty years, was the one to retake his birthright. And she didn’t even ask for a copper in return. Her assistant had told him that she’d done it for the fun of it. As if toppling regimes was something she did for _fun_. 

His reign was off to a great start. A Fire Lord who wasn't even able to take back his own throne. 

* * *

He sat there until a servant arrived and said “Your Majesty… the… the Royal Court awaits... Your Majesty's prescense.” a servant spoke… quietly. She’d served his grandfather, his father, and his sister, and none of them tolerated anything less than full servitude. Speaking loudly in the face of the Fire Lord was a crime. The Imperial Firebenders would ensure that those who did speak at an inappropriate level would face justice.

“Thank you… Kuno, was it?” the man said, taking a few deep breaths, and rising from his chair. A chair that only one person ever sat on.

“Yes, Your Majesty” she raised her hands and bowed to him. As she was supposed to. She’d served his grandfather, his father, and his sister. All of them expected the entire world to submit to their absolute rule. Even in the privacy of their own personal chambers.

He took a step into the halls. The Imperial Firebenders bowed. The servants and coutiers and attendants came to a halt and bowed. If the Fire Lord asks, the world stops. 

A familiar face came to meet him from her own chamber. Clad in long black and red robes with her hair done up, as a noblewoman’s hair ought to be, Lady Mai was one of his only allies. _Friends_. “You look tired,” she said, sounding quite annoyed or neutral in tone. 

“I am.” he replied, his own tone unsure of where it was supposed to be. “Or… is it the Fire Lord is tired?” 

“Either one works. I think if you say ‘The Fire Lord is’ over and over, you’ll lose your mind.”

_Lose your mind._ He stopped and visibly shook. All four of the previous incumbents to sit on the Dragon Throne had lost their mind.

Azulon believed the Court to be infiltrated with spies. He believed that people were plotting to dethrone him. He believed a grand conspiracy existed.

Ozai believed he was the Phoenix King and ran off to get in an airship and burn a whole continent down. He believed that Agni chose him to bring about the downfall of the Avatar. 

Any woman who burns down a Palace on dragonback isn’t fully mentally there to begin with, but Azula lost it when her father’s head was delivered by… the shadows themselves… to her Palace’s doorstep. If that wasn’t bad enough, a letter was attached to it. “With love, the Earth Kingdom,” followed by a scribble. Nobody in the Royal Court could make out what the scribble was. Or… that’s what he heard. What kind of person signs a paper with a scribble of ink? 

Then came the Shogun. Bujing wanted to restore the Shogunate of yesteryear. He declared a regime to last “For all time!” The Earth Queen’s mighty army allowed ‘all time’ to last less than a year. 

The Palace fell on her birthday, a 'birthday gift' from her most loyal servants to her. It was a birthday gift that cost thousands of men. 

Then his mind returned to the present. His shaking caused Lady Mai to show some emotion. “F...forgive me, I didn’t mean-” but the Imperial Firebenders had already pointed their naginatas at her. Causing the Fire Lord to so much as _quiver_ was punishable by death. 

“Stop!” the Fire Lord yelled, though it was more of a panicked shout. “Leave her be!” and the Imperial Firebenders brought their weapons back to their sides and apologized to the Fire Lord. It was then that he realized he could have anyone executed. He’d never really put together that the Fire Lord can execute people at will. 

“I’m so sorry” the Fire Lord stated, far less like a Fire Lord and far more like a scared young Prince afraid of being punished for stepping out of line.

“Don’t be, Zuko. Though, you should probably redact the ‘execute them if His Royal Majesty shakes’ edict.”

So the Fire Lord raised his fist, trying to sound like a powerful tigerdillo. “No more executions if… if… I shake!... from a… person’s… comment! People… won’t be executed for that!”. Instead, he was shaking while declaring it, and he sounded more like a feeble turtle duck than a tigerdillo.

The Imperial Firebenders raised their hands and bowed. “As Your Majesty commands.” 

Lady Mai smiled. “You’ve almost got this whole edict thing down.”

He didn’t ‘almost’ have anything… beyond a mental breakdown. That realization from earlier? It made him want to sit down… and do nothing. The power he had… he didn’t know if he wanted it. But… her next comment made him smile, “You might not be a bad Fire Lord.” And, she wasn’t wrong. He might not be. 

Fire Lord Zuko’s first edict: A citizen of the Fire Nation would not be executed if their comment causes the Fire Lord to quiver.

  
He hadn't even reached the Royal Court yet. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One-shot prologue over.
> 
> Next time, it's time for Zuko to meet the Royal Court. Or what's left of them, that is. (Assuming this gets a kudos)
> 
> W̶a̶c̶k̶y̶ ̶A̶d̶v̶e̶n̶t̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶e̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶w̶a̶c̶k̶y̶ ̶p̶e̶o̶p̶l̶e̶.̶.̶.̶w̶a̶i̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶i̶t̶ ̶w̶r̶o̶n̶g̶ ̶f̶i̶c̶.̶
> 
> Events in this story reference the finale of 'Records of the 53rd Earth Queen' and start of 'Wacky Adventures':  
> -The Siege of Caldera being the siege that capitulated the Fire Nation.  
> -Toph's the Earth Queen/Earth Empress.  
> -Bujing was the Shogun, he took the throne while Azula lost her mind.  
> -Mori, the Imperial Consort/Earth Emperor is also referenced. He gave Toph the 'birthday gift'. She gave him a shoulder punch.


	2. Terms of Surrender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko holds his first meeting in the Royal Court.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 29 KUDOS OVERNIGHT.
> 
> THANK YOU ALL!

_Dark_ . That’s the first word that came to Fire Lord Zuko’s mind as he stepped through the red curtain and into the Dragon Throne Room. The black pillars rose to a ceiling hidden in shadows. The floor was made of blood red tile. _That, or the blood seeped into the floor_. 

The golden Dragon Throne sat above a room-spanning _dais_. Four crimson pillars spiraled into a canopy of metal. For everything else would burn. And the Throne must shimmer. It’s said that the wall represents the Fire Lord’s inner flame. No matter the height of the flames, the Dragon Throne would shimmer. 

_The taller the flames, the more powerful the Fire Lord,_ is what he learned during his tutelage.

Azulon’s fire threatened to engulf the ceiling. Sometimes, it engulfed servants or officials. Ozai’s was controlled, but couldn’t reach the height of his father’s, no matter how hard he tried. Azula’s, it’s said, during the five days she held the throne, was enraged. _A wall of spikes, blue like the blacksmith’s flames,_ the few servants who survived her called it. She’d lost her dragon, so she’d try to become one. Any who debated this divine claim would face immolation, instantly. The Shogun’s was dull, just like his prospects of surviving the Earth Kingdom’s invasion.

And Zuko’s was barely present. _It looks like a row of lanterns_. 

He’d seen plenty of lanterns. Ba Sing Se. _The Earth Queen is hospitable_ , her attendants said of her. _The Earth Queen will grant you a home here for as long as the alliance is held_ , the blackcoats with conical hats told him. _The Earth Queen is ever merciful… except not to you_ , her personal bodyguard once said… before cleaving a rebel general’s head off.

* * *

_The Earth Queen will wait for the Fire Lord,_ he heard back in Yu Dao. 

_But the Avatar must fly against the Fire Lord… it is his destiny to duel the Fire Lord…_ , the then exiled Prince appealed for his new companion. 

_Destiny is nonsense. I can put an earth spike through ‘destiny’,_ the short woman replied, cracking her knuckles. 

They’d all fought the Fire Lord, as one. The skies bled and rained bombs and fire pillars that hadn’t been seen in a hundred years, and wouldn’t be seen in a hundred more. _The waterbender had her water turned to steam. I… wasn’t strong enough. The Avatar wasn’t trained enough._

Then she put an earth spike right through destiny itself. The Phoenix Lord. _The Tyrant,_ the Colonials and Earth Kingdomers called him, cheering. _Father,_ he said when he finally saw the body. 

* * *

“Your Majesty” the… _there’s so few of them,_ the Fire Lord thought to himself… the figures said while raising their hands and giving proper bows. Each was dressed in the traditional long red and black court robes with only the faintest hint of gold around the collar. Wearing any gold was forbidden. 

The flames must reflect off the Fire Lord and only the Fire Lord. 

He felt the Dragon Throne’s hand rests. _So soft._ Red silk slit-like cushions for the hands. Invisible to anyone in the Throne Room. A larger cushion of a gold and red quilted pattern was for him to sit on. When he sat, it looked as if he sat on… no, he would look like he sat on a flaming golden chair if his flames were high enough. But now was not the time to think of that. 

_Surrender._ One word. They’d unofficially surrendered, but the victors wanted something in _writing_. 

The Fire Lord looked down at the dark room. All he could make out from the room was the world-spanning war map, _still with pieces on it,_ he noted, and the heads of the few officials present. _Six people. Five men. One woman. Middle-aged or elderly._ Zuko used to attend Court… long ago. He didn’t recognize any of these old faces. 

Lady Mai could not climb up to the Dragon Throne. _Why?_ He pondered. He didn’t know if anyone alive had the answer. She took her place as the one nearest to him, just below the _dais._

The Court would wait forever for him to speak if he so willed it. 

“R… Royal Court. We…” He didn’t even know how to start the statement. _Formally speaking_ was something unknown to him. It’s one thing to tell the Helmsman to turn. It’s another to try and open Court.

The Court would wait forever for him to choose _his_ words if he so willed it.

“I…” _no, that’s wrong_ , he thought to himself. 

“The Fire Lord made…” _no, I didn’t make peace… or a surrender, that’s what I’m here to do_ , he thought.

“The Fire Lord wishes to…” _no, that’s wrong. I don’t wish for anything. This is what must be done_ , he thought. 

“The Fire Lord wants to…” he rolled off what he said inside his head and concluded that that was the best opening.

“The Fire Lord wants to sign a… surrender.” He paused. _I said that wrong_ , he realized. He let out a long sigh. Nobody made fun of him for sighing. Nobody made fun of him for pausing. Nobody made fun of him for _anything_.

The Court would wait forever for him to act if he so willed it. 

He looked at the ‘Royal Court’, all six of them. He tried to scan them for reactions. He wanted to know what they thought.

“I wish to surrender to the Earth Kingdom.” _‘I?’ ‘I?’ It’s ‘Fire Lord!’_ and he brought his fist down and let out a sharp exhalation of frustration. The flames went up half a _hiro_.

“The Earth Kingdom is no more, Your Majesty”, a man with a thin grey mustache, the philtrum shaved, spoke up. 

“It is known as the Earth Empire, Your Majesty,” a woman with black and grey hair drawn into a topknot affirmed.

“The Earth Queen has taken the title of ‘First Earth Empress’ as her title, Your Majesty,” a man with a dark grey mustacheless short beard said. 

_The Earth Empire?,_ he thought to himself. “How could she do that?” he asked, looking around as if she’d pop out of the ground like she was well known to do. 

Not answering a question from the Fire Lord is punishable by death. The Fire Lord didn’t know that.

A man with a dark grey three-pointed beard spoke up. “Your Majesty, she chooses whatever title she wishes to choose.” 

The Fire Lord had trouble accepting that. _She can just… take whatever title she wants? She… stormed in here… and for her victory… won a title?_ , he tried to draw conclusions but drew up nothing. 

Needless to say, the interlude on proper titles had distracted him from his goal. _Surrender_. 

“The Fire Lord…” he had to pause, for he thought that ‘ _wishing to surrender’ isn’t the right way to put it_.

“The Fire Lord will draw up a document…” _that’s right, that’s what they wanted me to do_ , he thought, then he felt a newfound courage, “...approving of the Fire Nation’s unconditional surrender to the Earth…” _what was it?_ , “... _Empire_.”

“Your Majesty…” a man with brownish-black hair and a full three-pointed beard spoke up. “...we cannot surrender just yet. There are still…” he coughed. “...insurgents… who have not chosen to surrender.” 

Suddenly, more than one word came to him. _If we don’t surrender, she will return. The ships will return. The steel ships and the steel tanks and the biplanes and the Siege Cannon, they will come back, and they will turn the whole Fire Nation into rubble._

_All in the name of their… Empress._

The Fire Lord exhaled so sharply that the flames below him grew two _hiro_ at once. The court officials held their ground, but the light flashed through their eyes.

All of them fell to bows. “Forgive us, Your Majesty”. 

The wrath of the Fire Lords was known as far as the Barbarian’s longhouses of Xishan. Even their boreal god, the Great Hunter, could not protect them from the Ashmakers. 

“ _Where are the rebels_ ” the voice that came through his mouth didn’t feel as though it was his own. 

“The largest… Your Majesty…” the thin grey mustached man began, “...is at Feixi-jo. Daimyo Yin-Lee, Your Majesty.”

_Feixi_ , a name the Fire Lord hadn’t need to think of since the days of his tutelage. _Feixi-jo. Northwestern Caldera Island. Overlooks the Sunset Sea_. 

The Fire Lord stood. “Where is the Royal Army?” but before any could speak, he went “No, no, no, no. The Royal Army is wounded.” 

The woman asked “What will Your Majesty do?” while the other officials silently thought to themselves. 

_A Fire Lord leads his people,_ he was taught. _A Fire Lord sets the example,_ he was taught. _A Fire Lord does not back down to challenge,_ he… learned, the hard way. 

_Grandfather would kill the Daimyo. Father would kill the entire bloodline. Sister would turn the entire shiro into ash and plant salt, so it may never be settled again._

“I will go there and peacefully resolve it” 

“Your Majesty!” the court officials all pleaded at the same time.

_“I have a dragon.”_ and he descended from the stairs and walked past them. Mai followed him. 

The Agni Kai Square had avoided the ravages of the Siege. The only damage was a trench dug on the northern side. A tattered Fire Nation flag and a crossbow was all the Fire Lord needed to see to learn that this was one of the places the Shogun’s men used… for a last stand. _A last stand against artillery. And steel tanks. And biplanes. And a human wave of men._ Now, the Agni Kai Square holds the Fire Lord’s mount. 

Ran and Shaw gifted the Crown Prince a dragon egg. He was Blood of Agni, so he could ride it. The Dragon of the West hid his dragon until it hatched. When it did, he told Druk to stay in the uninhabited Taihua Mountains. The Dragon of the West, even at his worst, was too honorable to take a dragon and roast his enemies. ‘It would kill innocents’, he told his Prince. ‘When the war is over, you’ll ride him, my son’, he told the Prince.

Then Prince Lu Ten lost his head. And the Dragon of the West ran back to Caldera, a broken man.

Years later, a Princess was just done practicing her lightning bending on some locals when she heard that a dragon lived in the surrounding mountains. The Princess’s blood was even stronger. The dragon came to her and she took it as her personal mount.

The Princess didn’t care about innocents. It was said that General Shinji and Heiji could see the Royal Earth Palace’s smoke from their Drill. 

The Dragon of the West took his dragon back and passed it on to his nephew.

Druk raised his head from his coiled rest and looked at the arriving Fire Lord. 

The Fire Sages dictate that all who serve Agni must bow to the great beast. All, except the Fire Lord. The Imperial Firebenders, red statues, bowed to Druk.

A softer side of the Fire Lord came out. “You want to go with me on a trip?” and the great beast took a whiff of the Fire Lord. The dragon’s formidable face was made far less intimidating when the Fire Lord petted his scaly nose, and the dragon let out a long, soft, croon. The Fire Lord then flew up to the saddle on his fire jet-propelled fleet. 

The Fire Lord sat down on the saddle.

“Your Majesty! May I come along?” Lady Mai shouted up to her boyfriend, now, her Fire Lord.

The Fire Lord didn’t want to say anything. He looked at the sky and felt the surge of necessity coarse through him. Then he remembered that _if I don’t say anything, she won’t be allowed to come along_. 

“Yes.” Druk lowered his talons to let Lady Mai climb on. The Fire Lord took her hand and pulled her the rest of the way. 

The Fire Lord took his mount’s reins and snapped them. 

Druk’s wing beats were strong enough to blast the surrounding flag pennants off. His teeth were the length of a short _jian_ . His scales were as hard as ten sheets of steel compounded. His talons were as long as _yari_ s.

The Fire Lord took flight. 

Not much later, when the Dragon of the West emerged from his slumber and inquired as to the location of “my nephew”, one of his guards told him that “The Fire Lord has taken flight to handle the rebels in Feixi.”

Iroh’s face whitened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time, Zuko rushes off to handle some Shogunate Remnants.
> 
> Do you like this? Leave a comment! I want to know people's thoughts, both as old fans and new ones!
> 
> \---------------------  
> I wrote this as a one shot to compliment my main series, 'Wacky Adventures of the Earth Empress'. This got more kudos overnight than that did in 7 months and 1 million words.
> 
> You better believe I'm going to write more of this! 29 KUDOS! 
> 
> I expected 5 or 10. NOT 29!  
> \---------------------
> 
> If you see something that hasn't been explained yet, (like the names of the Ministers), that's because we'll learn them as Zuko meets them. Chances are, anything related to the Earth Kingdom/Empire has already been covered in 'Wacky Adventures'. It doesn't make sense that Zuko would know those things, though, so it acts as an introduction for the reader and Zuko.
> 
> A hiro is a Japanese analogue for 1.8 meters.  
> A sun is a Japanese analogue for inch.   
> Shiro is the Japanese character for castle  
> Jo is the character used when the castle is attached to another name. E.x. Caldera-jo would be Caldera Castle.  
> The Barbarians are an easter egg from 'Wacky Adventures'.


	3. The Flight to Feixi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko and Mai fly northwest to Feixi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 40+ kudos for 2 chapters!  
> You better believe I'll be writing more!
> 
> If you like this, leave a comment!

“I’ve spotted some Earth soldiers” Lady Mai finally broke from her attempted manicure -hard to do on the back of a dragon- and called out. The Fire Lord leaned over from his reins and looked where she was pointing. The southeastern side was garrisoned by a squadron of _Imperial_ , for the title of Royal was no longer relevant, Tundra Tanks. A green stripe ran down the middle of each tank, with an earth coin painted onto the roof. 

The Fire Lord wondered why they’d have markings to be seen _from above_.

The dragon screeched, the Fire Lord spun back towards looking ahead, only for Druk to then turn his head slightly to the left and cause his master to turn left.

A pair of biplanes was the answer. 

He didn’t need to verify which nation they belonged to, for only _one_ power had mastered mechanized flight. 

“Are they going to attack us?” he asked a question while facing his dragon, but it was directed at either. 

“ _Zu_ ko,” Lady Mai didn’t need to act all prim and proper, under penalty of death, while it was just the two of them, a few hundred _hiro_ up. “they don’t have air-to-air weapons.”

“Yet,” he replied, solemn.

“What do you mean, _yet_? How are they going to invent air-to-air weapons?”

“Didn’t you hear what the self-titled Sky Conqueror had done at Azure Harbor?” the Fire Lord asked, rolling the title off like some kind of evil Spirit.

“No,” she replied brashly. She wasn’t going to be executed for being so ‘rude’ to the Fire Lord. Not if nobody knew about it. 

* * *

There was a time when the only world power to hold domain over the skies was the Fire Nation. _Then we lost it when Father flew against the Kingdom_.

The monarch of her own personal continent had burst into laughter upon discovering the explosive potential of a stone -or metal- shell with blasting jelly stuck inside the tip. 

_‘How are you going to fire a metal shell?’_ the then-Prince asked. 

_‘By punching it. Really hard. Really, really hard’_ then she punched a metal shell out of a metal tube and sent it flying into the afternoon sky. Where it fell upon didn’t matter. 

Weeks, her personal metalbender corps spent training to punch shells out of tubes. Yu Dao turned into a fortress city, with an artillery piece every couple blocks and scattered across the surrounding mountains.

Weeks, her best craftsmen spent building a new _kind_ of weapon. A heavier-than-air mechanized beast. 

Weeks, her most brazen Colonial volunteers spent training to fly wooden boxes. 

One morning, the skies bled. 

She was sipping a cup of Kyoshi Islander Clear Whiskey at noontime. The then-Prince’s most prominent of companions was having an existential crisis over watching someone die right in front of his eyes. Everyone who wasn’t affiliated with the Avatar was celebrating.

There was a time when the _other_ world power, hers, held dominion over the sky. 

_‘I will build the greatest air fleet of all time!’_ she declared to a midnight gathering. Nobody could debate her. _But the Fire Nation will not give up so easily,_ Zuko thought then, as a response to her proclamation. 

_‘Her arrogance will cost her’_ , the Fire Lord had said to his uncle while over a cup of tea. 

_‘It will, Prince Zuko. The Fire Nation’s success during the Hundred Year War came from it’s inventors just as much as it did from it’s generals. The Fire Nation has the industrial drive to succeed. Tanks, trains and airships, all born from times of necessity_.’ his uncle replied in a gentle yet stern tone. 

Some time later, when discussing the war, his uncle told him _‘the Fire Nation has ample amounts of firebenders and of metal.’_ The legendary Dragon of the West tried appealing this, but found the Kingdom’s bureaucracy getting in his way. 

Then, one fine late winter morning, the Fire Nation’s greatest scientists revealed their greatest invention. 

_The Fire Jet_ , the Generals called them. _Lil’ Azulas_ , the soldiers called them. 

The small craft were propelled flames of a firebender compounded with a turbine. They could only support two passengers, and it was cramped at that. What they lacked in size, they made up for in speed and payload. Bombs. They were suicide missions from the get-go, and it was the last thing the Shogun could do in an attempt to stop the tidal wave of Earth Kingdomers.

The Western Fleet was torched at harbor, _the Azure Harbor_. Six hundred ships, wooden junks, were lost. Thousands died in the greatest surprise attack in history. And the air fleet was mostly lost.

_‘The reason the Kingdom is so successful, Prince Zuko, is because of their diversity. Each culture contributes something new to the drawing board’,_ his uncle once said. 

The inventor of heavier-than-air flight reinvented the explosive crossbow. His son mounted it to his personal biplane. The inventors of anti-air artillery made them smaller and more mobile

Within a month of Azure Harbor, the Fire Nation’s capital was under siege. 

* * *

  
  


The pair of biplanes came up alongside the Fire Lord, with both aircraft on his right. 

“What am I supposed to do?” he asked his dragon, but the question was directed to his Lady.

“I have no idea,” she replied. 

“If we were at sea, I’d hail them” the titular captain of his own ship explained like he was defining a nautical term.

“I don’t know what that is,” she replied. 

The Fire Lord groaned. “Right… you’ve never been at sea.” He was wrong. She had, but as a passenger, not as the captain of a light cruiser.

He tried shouting a “Hello!” but their biplane engines roared too loudly to be heard. So he pinched the bridge of his nose. 

He tried shouting “Good afternoon!” but the biplanes didn’t hear him.

The lead pilot, a commoner from a village in Yunlicun in the Agrarian Zone, waved to the Fire Lord.

The Fire Lord, absolute ruler of a country of millions, waved back. 

The lead pilot tipped his wings a few times.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the Fire Lord asked, facing ahead of him. 

“I don’t know,” the Lady replied, as she was looking at her nails and wasn’t paying any attention.

The lead pilot broke off and his wingman peeled after him. The two throttled their engines and flew towards the same mountain range he was flying towards. 

He wondered. _Are they going where I’m going?_

An hour passed. Lady Mai resisted the urge to fall asleep. They flew up a river valley. He remembered his tutelage. _The Naoe River. The Naoe River Valley._ The dormant volcanoes ascended to form two long walls of forested spikes on either side of him. Ten different villages were spotted huddling against the river itself at different points. Whenever the valley would birth a hill, a keep would be found on it. 

The largest he’d seen thus far was Tozangji-jo, held by the Sakurai of Toazangji. A round two-tiered fort with a three story tenshu.

Back in the skies, the pair of biplanes were, as he thought, going in the same direction as he was. 

As afternoon grew late, the three of them emerged from the _Naoe_ . To their left, the volcanoes turned to foothills which turned to a coastal plain. To their right, however, the mountains grew yet higher and higher. And along one such mountain was a large castle. A castle with three levels and a five-tiered _tenshu_ . A castle dug into the mountainside. In the plain below it, an array of… _artillery,_ he suddenly realized. Artillery behind earth walls. Artillery in front of a cleared piece of plains country. Plains country set aside for an airfield. 

The Fire Lord brought his mount to a halt in mid air. Druk was more than capable of keeping himself in one position. His turbulence made him a potent target for any ground crews… except he was a hundred _hiro_ too high.

“Do we go down there and visit the besiegers, or the castle?” the Fire Lord asked Lady Mai, who definitely did not almost fall asleep.

“We’re still allied to the…” the Lady had to remember which title was correct, “...Earth Empress, right?”

“That’s what I’m asking!” the Fire Lord shouted in an explosive reaction. 

Lady Mai figured out her own conclusion. “We’re still allied to them, yes. And if not, we have a dragon.”

_A dragon_ . Zuko had heard what his sister did with _a dragon_. Thousands of nobles were killed before the freshly served wine could cool.

“I don’t want to kill anyone!” the Fire Lord insisted in another explosive shout. This was one that made his hands heat up. It’s a good thing that the reins are made of fireproof skin.

“The Daimyo may not have the same courtesy,” Lady Mai replied, half-sarcastic, half-concerned for him.

The Fire Lord snapped his mount’s reins and had him descend towards the Imperial siege lines. “The Avatar wouldn’t kill anyone, shouldn’t we-” but the Fire Lord, absolute ruler of his nation, was cut off by his girlfriend.

“The Avatar hasn’t had to fight any wars, _Zu_ ko. What happened the other night at the Royal Dinner? Did you see what the Dai Li and the Royal Guard did to those men?”

_Her men, the blackcoats, the men in golden armor, her personal bodyguard, that tall lumbering man, they cut down those officials until… until… they got on their knees and surrendered._

“They killed them,” The Fire Lord said under a hushed breath. “They were...wrong to kill them,” he added, in a dull voice. 

“Men and women that were going to kill you!” Mai shouted. 

“With kitchen knives and basic firebending moves,” he replied, trying to rationalize what amounted to a coup.

“ _Zu_ ko! You are the Fire Lord! People are going to want you dead!” she shouted, showing a lot of one emotion, _worry_. Her way of showing worry is yelling. 

“Then we can find ways of not killing them!” he counter-yelled out of insecurity. If the Fire Lord yells at you, you can be punished by execution. Good thing nobody could hear the Fire Lord getting angry. 

Her tone calmed back down to the usual monotone. “How are you planning to solve this, Zuko?” Her question was exactly the same as the one his personal tutor, Sheng, of the Kobayashi family, once asked. 

* * *

_‘Prince Zuko, how would you take this fortification?’_ Sheng had asked, pointing his instructor’s stick at the mock-up of an Earth Kingdom plains outpost. A small earth wall enshrining a single three-floor keep. 

_‘I would show up with my army, and I’d show the defender that I have the bigger army. The man with the bigger army wins, so he’ll surrender. We can even discuss the terms over tea! Like what Uncle does!’_ the little Princeling espoused a humanistic approach.

_‘Wrong!’_ the tutor shouted. _‘He’d simply backstab you the moment you left. You must drive him into submission. If you want to drink tea with him, wait until he’s in chains. Your uncle is prestigious enough to have that right, Prince Zuko. You must earn it yourself.’_

_I’m the Fire Lord. I have earned the right to end a siege peacefully, if I want_ , the Fire Lord thought to himself. 

* * *

The dragon landed not far from the temporary headquarters of the siege lines. The soldiers present ran out of the way to avoid being crushed, or immolated. 

A few platoons of men clad in light green tunics, forest green short capes, and dark green-rimmed conical hats formed a large cordon around the dragon. Some had the earth coin flag hanging from the end of their pikes.

“Welcome, Your Majesty,” a man in the attire of a Sergeant greeted him. He got on his knees and bowed to the Fire Lord. The rest of his men followed suit. On the other continent, the words ‘Your Majesty’ are followed by kowtows. None of these men have ever bowed to a monarch before.

“What brings Your Majesty here?” the Sergeant asked after rising from his bow.

The Fire Lord “I’m here to speak to your commander! I’d…” he stuttered, _it’s finally time, I have that right,_ he reminded himself, “I’d like to help end the siege!” 

Within a few minutes, their commander emerged.

A long brown beard and a set of clothes identical to his soldiers. The only way anyone could tell he was their commander was because of his special gold-rimmed topknot cap. 

Oh, yeah. And he had a giant warhammer. 

“Your Majesty, presenting General Fong, Imperial Commander of the Imperial Army of the South, the Soldier’s General!”

General Fong slammed his warhammer’s shaft-end into the stone, cracking it. 

“Mornin’, Your Majesty,” the Soldier’s General offered a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time, Zuko tries to find the peaceful solution!  
> Fong... doesn't.
> 
> Mai's way of saying Zuko is me trying to reflect how she pronounces it.
> 
> There are lots more references to 'Records' and the start of 'Adventures' in this chapter. But, unlike those, now we can see some events from Zuko's POV.  
> -The biplanes. The Mechanist invented them thanks to Toph spending lots of money on the project  
> -A dozen pilots flew against Ozai's airship fleet in a forlorn hope  
> -The anti-air weapons were joint-invented by Toph and Captain Kotyan "Wuhan" Zheng, Captain of the Royal Earthbending/Imperial Metalbending Guard  
> -The Surprise Attack at Azure Harbor, still a Pearl Harbor reference.  
> -The Fire Jets were and still are references to the Me 163 Komet.  
> -The Royal Dinner is from chapter 2 of 'Adventures', when a bunch of court officials who were going to coup Zuko pick a fight with the wrong Empress (and friends).  
> -Now, we learn of Fong's whereabouts after chapter 3 of 'Adventures' and before we see him again in Ba Sing Se.  
> -Fong's titles are from 'Adventures'.


	4. Imperial Diplomacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Fire Lord discusses and contemplates a peaceful solution to the siege.

“ _ Volley! _ ” came the shout of some Sergeant. The Fire Lord didn’t recognize the accent’s specifics, but the slower enunciation suggested the man was from the large plains country of the southwestern Earth continent. It’s hard to know for certain when referring to a continent the size of a hemisphere and populated by, as the Fire Lord recalled from memory,  _ ‘ten thousand cultures’. _

After horns and gongs sounded, the Fire Lord shouted, very un-Fire Lord of him, “Why is the ground itself shaking?”. 

His answer came as earthbenders punched shells out of metal tubes on the back of mechanical vehicles,  _ those are trucks _ , he noted. Others, in teams of four, picked up hut-sized stones, with a fifth punching it upwards. The Fire Lord, his dragon, and his Lady, all watched one rock as it careened through the sky before crashing against the second-level wall of Feixi-jo. 

Other stones, boulders and shells flew against the mountain castle… and it’s entire surrounding mountainside. Explosive-tipped shells blasted holes in the mountains while stone ones smashed, fractured, and splintered upon impact. 

While he wasn’t looking, General Fong walked a few  _ hiro  _ over, shouted some kind of expletive, took his hammer, pulled a stone shell up, and smacked the shell with a warhammer larger than he was. The histories may claim his shell was one of the ones that hit the stone  _ tenshu _ ’s fourth story. 

The Fire Lord looked back at him as he returned, striding over like a young man carrying a bamboo reed, not a middle-aged general carrying a heavy warhammer. 

_ How do I reason with this man? _ , the Fire Lord thought to himself.

“I’d…”  _ no, that’s wrong,  _ he thought. “The Fire Lord-” but he was cut off by the ground shaking again.  _ They’re launching another volley of rocks?  _ He looked towards the artillery batteries. 

One especially happy Imperial soldier yelled “Eat this, Ashmaker!” and  _ slammed  _ the trigger with his  _ dao _ ’s pommel hilt, causing a ballista to fire.

One barefooted Imperial raised his hand, screamed “Ten Thousand Years!”, dropped his hand, and the five trucks he was standing behind launched their stone shells with the operators joining his chant of “Ten Thousand Years!”

These comments, and the implications of other comments up and down the battery, caused the Fire Lord to scowl. Lady Mai retained her neutral face and waited for the Fire Lord to act. Or not to act. 

Yet another soldier pointed at the sky and shouted “The Air Corps’ here!” causing most of the men around the Fire Lord to look up and see… ...those two biplanes from earlier. And friends. Twenty biplanes in five squadrons of four came flying over, only a few hundred  _ hiro  _ up. Low enough to make out the earth coins emblazoned onto their sides, high enough that the Fire Lord couldn’t tell what they were carrying.

Within a minute and a half, those twenty biplanes were over the castle. The castle defenders opened up with their own defenses. Fireballs and “ballistas?”, asked Lady Mai. “I think so,” the Fire Lord said, unsure of himself. He didn’t have the time to think back to his lessons in warfare. 

Like falcon-fishers hunting their prey, each one dived, one or two at a time, pulling out a few seconds before hitting the castle. The explosions might not have been felt over here, but they were heard. Like a surprise gong, they  _ boomed _ over all. Bits of stone and wood went flying upwards. 

The Fire Lord’s eyes watched one such bombing run. One of the third level’s towers, a multi-rooved object likely many years old, took a hit to the escarpment below it, causing the whole section of the wall to collapse into a landslide. The tower leaned, leaned, before finally falling over and crashing into…  _ whoever else was down there _ , the Fire Lord thought to himself. 

When the twenty bombers had gone, sustaining no casualties,  _ a far cry from when they fought at Azure Harbor and lost almost the entire fleet _ , the Fire Lord turned back towards General Fong…

...who was sitting down on a red-colored stool that bore a white four-petaled flower on it’s back, sipping a cup of tea.  _ That’s not from the Earth continent _ , the Fire Lord’s eyes widened at the realization.  _ No, I can’t get concerned about that. That I can bring up with… the… Empire… itself _ . 

_ I need to save those people up there.  _ The Fire Lord walked over to the seated General and bowed to him. “General Fong, I’d like to help end the siege.” 

The General laughed. “Good, take your dragon-” he pointed at the resting mount, “-go up there-” he pointed at the castle partially on fire, “-and burn those people to the ground.” 

“What! No! No. I’m not going to…” the Fire Lord paused when he realized he was shouting at some General, not talking like a Fire Lord is supposed to talk. 

“I’m…”  _ no, that’s wrong _ , “...the Fire Lord will not do that, G…” he quivered at the thought,  _ burning down all those defenders, loyal Fire Nation citizens _ , “...General…” he shook again, “...Fong.”

He looked back at his dragon, then at Lady Mai for reassurance, she gave him a neutral expression, then he looked back at General Fong. This gave him some courage to walk right up to the seated General and go “The Fire Lord orders you to halt this siege!” 

The General looked up at the teenager dressed in a fancy crimson robe balling his fists. The General looked past him at the teenager’s companion, a woman who showcased no emotion. Then the General took his tea cup and downed the rest of it.

“ _ No _ ,” and the General licked his lips.

_ What? What do you mean ‘no’? Why are you so calm?  _ “ _ Why _ ?” the Fire Lord loudly countered, not thinking about how un-monarchical and immature this made him look. 

The other soldiers, the General’s personal retinue, resisted the urge to break into laughter. They weren’t the formal Guards that served the Earth Monarch, nor were they the  _ blackcoats _ , as the Fire Lord called them, the secret police that served the Earth Monarch’s ever wish. As such, they could laugh. They cupped their mouths with their hands to hide their laughter. Lady Mai gave one man dagger-eyes, and the man looked like he’d seen a ghost and ceased. 

In the meantime, the General waved over a man in the attire of a Earth Army Lieutenant with a slightly fancier conical hat than most, and a cleaner tunic than most, and the Lieutenant handed the General a scroll. The General calmly unraveled it, then read from it.

The Fire Lord wasn’t paying attention to the General’s calm recital of a scroll, instead focusing on the artillery as they let loose an inconsistent, erratic barrage of explosives and stones. 

It was only when the General stood up, absolutely towering over the Fire Lord, did the Fire Lord turn back to him, cough, and start paying attention. “Did’ya hear what I read,  _ Your Majesty _ ?” the General boomed, lightly tapping the ground with the bottom end of the warhammer.

_ I was busy… looking… at all those people being killed up there…  _ he thought to himself. The Fire Lord didn’t fear the huge General, instead puffing up his chest and, in a calm, precise, voice, said  _ “No _ .  _ I didn’t hear what you had to say _ .  _ You want to repeat yourself? _ ” 

The General took a pace back. He didn’t show that briefest hint of fear on his face, but the other soldiers, the men he’d brought along from his Southern Fort in Dalaozi, they’d seen the look. 

“By Her Imperial Majesty’s orders-” the men around the two Fire Nations shouted “Ten Thousand Years!” at once, he continued, “-long may she live,  _ all  _ those who sided with the Shogun will surrender, or they will be killed.” 

He excused himself by walking back to his dragon and leaning against him. Druk lowered his wing to let the Fire Lord sit down -it didn’t hurt his wing- and think. 

* * *

_ Killed.  _ He thought about that word. It was a word his grandfather loved.  _ ‘Kill them all!’ _ Azulon ‘the Mad’, as some in the other continent called him, used to shout.  _ ‘Burn the town to the ground!’  _ the ‘Mad’ would shout. More than ninety years of nothing but war drove the prodigy of a firebender crazy. 

_ ‘A war that will end soon’,  _ the Fire Lord’s mother once told him when he asked  _ ‘Why Uncle and Cousin Lu Ten haven’t returned yet.’ _ The Fire Lord remembered how innocent and high-pitched he sounded.  _ Not for long _ . 

The Fire Lord’s face went from a thin smile, thinking of the days he and his sister would play around, to a scowl, a scowl directed at his father, the days when one was preferred over the other, into a deeper scowl, to the days when the two were separated, only to meet on the field of battle, to the  _ day  _ when he betrayed the Four Nations alliance… a day he still regretted. 

_ If only I could have helped you, Azula _ , he thought, his mind far from Feixi-jo and the artillery.

* * *

By the time he was trying to wipe tears from his face, his Lady had gotten to his side and wiped them off his unburnt cheek.  _ “ _ We don’t have to follow their rules” she whispered to him while the chorus of war drowned her out.

_ “You’re the Fire Lord, Zuko _ .  _ What you think is right is right. If everyone else wants them dead and you don’t, then-”  _ her voice grew louder, “-make it happen!”. 

“You think so?” he asked, trying not to think about  _ the days when… _ , recent days. 

“Yes,” and she gave his top knot a rub.

His mind resurfaced… the sounds of war booming and blasting around him. He turned towards Mai. “What would you advise?”, he asked, far softer than a Fire Lord ought to speak. It’s a good thing there weren’t any Fire Nationals around to hear, then.

“Talk to this rockheaded General. If he doesn’t listen, is anyone-” she looked him right in the eyes, “-is anyone stopping you, you, from flying Druk up there and sorting the situation out yourself?”

“But I don’t want to kill anyone!” and he thrust both his hands out as if trying to push the word  _ ‘kill _ ’ away. 

“Then tell this-” she looked over at the General, proudly standing there, one hand on his warhammer, one on his hip, “-Fong, that you want to send a messenger up there… Let them know that the Fire Lord-” and she gave his chest a shove, “-is down here, and that the Fire Lord-” she tapped his chest again, fluffing her cuffs in the process, “-wants to speak to this Daimyo Yin-Lee.”

_ I could try that. Speak to their lord and convince him that fighting is pointless and will only cost him more lives. I… I could do that, yes _ .

The Fire Lord nodded to Lady Mai. “Thank you, Mai. What would I do without you?”

“Probably something really dumb,” she said, shaking her robes back into their usual long length and stuffing her hands inside them.

The Fire Lord paced back to the General. He stayed in his position, proudly, unmoving. Even as the monarch of the second largest power walked right up to him and looked him in his eyes.

“The Fire Lord wishes to end this siege. The Fire Lord would like General Fong to send a messenger up to Feixi-jo to request that the Daimyo come down to…” he thought the next word over.  _ Surrender… the Daimyo might not surrender when requested to. We could talk. _ “...have a talk… with the Fire Lord.”

The General picked up his warhammer and let it drop,  _ thud _ , and crack against the floor again. “Would you ask me to defy my orders from Her Imperial Majesty?”

The Fire Lord felt himself choke up on his thoughts.  _ Lying to one of my own vassals. Lying to a Daimyo. No… no… this is the right thing to do. If he surrenders, they don’t die. But… is… is deception okay when it’s for this? Deception is wrong. But… if I’m honest… then he won’t leave. No… I… what would Uncle do?  _

_ Uncle would… sit down and talk to him over a cup of tea. And by the time Uncle was done, the man, the Earth Kingdom officer or whoever was defending the fort… they’d see their cause was lost. And… and… they’d surrender.  _

The Fire Lord took a deep breath. “Once this man comes down here, I will convince him to surrender. Your…” he paused, he dreaded thinking of world affairs as  _ a bunch of orders being passed around, treating everyone like objects… _ , “Your Empress will have her surrender, General.” and he tried to produce a confident face. Instead, he looked like he was about to have a breakdown.

After twirling the ends of his beard around in his fingers, General Fong began nodding. “Very well. I’ll take any kind of surrender from them.” Then he yelled orders to summon an ostrich horse, a single rider, and a pennant. Two seats were also taken out, taken out, not pulled out of the earth, and offered to Lady Mai and the Fire Lord.

She pulled on his elbow to get him to sit.

The order was shouted up and down the battleine. “Cease batteries!” men in ten different Southern Earth accents shouted. Not a moment later, the machine-like precision of the Earth-folk reared itself once more, as a full company of spearmen were bisected right down the middle, letting a single rider ride off towards the burning castle.

He remembered Sheng’s lessons.  _ The universal sign of parley. The Daimyo must respect that _ .

Then, even while his Lady held his arm, he -against his will- was drowned in his thoughts. In dread.

_ Deception is wrong. Deception is what… no. Grandfather would never deceive. Father would. Father was cunning and would poison. Sister… deception was Azula’s favorite tool. Convince anyone and everyone that you were in a weaker position, then exploit their underestimations. Deceive. Exploit. Take advantage. Win. _

_ But… this isn’t that. Uncle never deceived anyone, right? He had them talk, and talked them out of a fight. And… and… the Daimyo is my vassal. He rebelled against me. I’m not… I’m not capturing a castle belonging to the Water peoples, or the Earth peoples. I’m… this is my vassal. He’s supposed to follow me, right?  _

The Fire Lord blurted out “Vassals follow the Fire Lord, right?” and his Lady’s eyes flashed wide for a moment.

Instead of answering his question, she asked “Do you… need to lie down? Do I need to get you something?” 

“No… thanks. I… I’m…” he stuttered, “The Daimyos are supposed to follow the Fire Lord, right?” and he looked at her like this was a question on a test he forgot, and now he needed someone to cheat and give him the answer.

“Yes,  _ Zu _ ko. All the Daimyos are required to follow the Fire Lord. If they don’t, then they can be imprisoned.” 

Zuko took this to mean that “Telling him… to surrender, is right, right?” 

“Yes,  _ Zu _ ko” and she let go of them. “I’m getting you something to drink.” She called over an attendant and the attendant brought the Fire Lord a flask of water. She forced it into his hands and, after some heavy prodding, made him take a sip. He guzzled it down.

A familiar noise sounded. A set of percussion instruments.  _ Three beats, quick succession. Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat tat. Rat-a-tat-tat _ . The Fire Lord looked to his side, towards the war musicians who drummed out the artillery’s orders. 

Their hands were at their sides and they were standing stiff-backed, waiting for a command.  _ Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat tat. Rat-a-tat-tat _ . 

_ They’re coming from the castle.  _ Then the Fire Lord recognized them.  _ Taiko.  _

The rider and his pennant came riding back down the mountainside, his bright green outfit contrasted sharply with the volcanic burnt topsoil. 

General Fong took a telescope, a Colonial designed one, from a nearby table, snapped it open, and scanned around.

The General lowered his telescope. “They’re sending someone out!”, he yelled, looking at his gathered officers, then towards the Fire Lord. His officers murmured a variety of possibilities. Some posited “A challenger?” while others said “The Lord himself?” This made the Fire Lord take a few deep breaths.  _ He’s a Daimyo, you uncultured… _ and he exhaled smoke from his flared nostrils.

The formation split for the returning rider. He swung wide around the resting Druk and over to the General. He didn’t bother with any courtesy for the world leader at his side, instead hastily shouting, “It’s a duelist! The Lord wants a duel!”. 

The Fire Lord’s eyelids threatened to blow off his face.  _ A duel?  _ Unable to contain himself, the monarch shouted “Is the man mad? I just wanted to talk to him!” but the officers, having heard the monarch shout like a whining child, broke into uncontrollable laughter.

Nothing calmed them down. 

Zuko calmed himself down by remembering another one of Sheng’s lessons. 

_ The Earth people can burn to fire, and they can be hit, but they will never bow or bend to anyone. They must be broken like a blacksmith breaks pure iron.  _

The challenger came riding up to the artillery batteries. He was clad in black and bright red  _ Tosei-gusoku _ , armor that hadn’t been produced for a hundred years. Only the Daimyos and their retainers wore them. His helm was decorated with a brass five-petaled flower encircled by a ring. He wore a  _ sashimono _ on his back, a  _ sashimono  _ with a red background and the same five-petaled flower, but yellow, and the same ring, but also yellow. He had a thin mustache and an even thinner pig-goatee. 

He dismounted and stood some thirty paces from the bracing spearline. He shouted, breaking the eerie silence. “Invading Earth Kingdomers! I challenge any among you to a nonbending duel in the name of honor!”

Druk raised his head to look out at the red-and-black man. The Fire Lord stood up like a bolt of lightning. 

General Fong licked his lips, picked up his warhammer, and walked forward. 

“I am Lord Michio of the Clan Suto, descendant of Daimyo Atsushi Suto!” and the man drew his katana from an elaborate, gem-studded, likely ancestral, scabbard, and brought it to a guard stance. 

“Thanks for telling me,” and before Lord Michio could respond, Fong raised his warhammer in a single motion and  _ slammed  _ Lord Michio in the chest so hard that his armor splintered. The Lord stumbled backwards and fell over. General Fong brought his warhammer down, shattering every last bone in Lord Michio’s chest. For good measure, he took his warhammer and caved the man’s head in. 

_ Agni above…  _ the Fire Lord fell backwards, his Lady grabbed him, and helped him back to his seat.

“Any other ‘honorable’ rebels wanna come? Or have the children had had enough playing around?” then Fong tossed his bloody warhammer to the ground and turned towards the pale faced Fire Lord.

“The man fought honorably, Your Majesty” and the Imperial Commander bowed to the numb monarch.

He heel-spun once again, pulled his  _ dao  _ out of his scabbard, and pointed the blade’s tip at the castle. “Now! Bring every last stone down if you must! Ten Thousand Years to Her Imperial Majesty!”

“Ten Thousand Years!” the army chanted, punching the air with their spears and blades. 

  
The General thrust his blade forward again. “ _ Charge _ !”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zuko tries to stop General Fong.  
> Zuko fails at international politics instead.  
> Multiple times.
> 
> -The tenshu is the central keep of Japanese castles  
> -Dalaozi is a commandery along the western coast of the Earth continent  
> -Taiko are Japanese drums, often used for warfare communication. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiko#Use_in_warfare  
> -Tosei-gusoku is one quite popular kind of Japanese armor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_armour#Tosei-gusoku . I chose this over O-Yoroi or other designs in honor of variation and protection in design. O-yoroi isn't as manueverable.  
> -A sashimono is what samurai are often seen wearing on their back. They're banners that help a commander identify who's part of who.  
> -Michio and the Suto Clan are of my creation.


	5. Stopping The Fong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fire Lord Zuko tries to stop General Fong from assaulting a castle full of people that want Fire Lord Zuko dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 53 KUDOS, YOU BETTER BELIEVE YOU'RE GETTING DAILY UPDATES FOR THIS.

“We’ve got to stop him” the Fire Lord yelled, not aware of the loudness of his voice.

“You have a dragon, _Zu_ ko, if you really want to stop him-” and she head-gestured in the direction of the dragon’s head.

The Fire Lord stressed how much he wasn’t going to do this, “I am _not_ killing General Fong,” and flailed his arms about like someone in the process of drowning. _I can’t. That’d make me no better than he is_. 

“Well, what do you plan on doing?” she asked, crossing her arms. 

“I…” _if I kill him_ … the Fire Lord stuttered his voice, “...she’ll have my head.” and the Fire Lord walked over to his Lady and looked like he was going to shake himself into a heart attack.

“Well… this is one of those conflicts where there are no, as the Avatar would say, ‘peaceful solutions’” and she turned towards the encampment. “They’re attacking rebels that want to kill you. At least they don’t want to.”

The Fire Lord felt like he was talking to a wall. “I’ll invent a…” _I can do it,_ “...a peaceful solution.”

“ _Zu_ ko, ever wondered why the Avatar is incapable of commanding anything beyond his own dining table?” and she huffed and puffed. 

“The Avatar is the Avatar! It is my destiny to-” but the Fire Lord’s desperate attempt to make sense of all of this was interrupted by Mai’s neutral, calm, tone, “-it’s your destiny to rule the Fire Nation. You don’t have to listen to a boy with no concept of ruling anything beyond his mount.”

“But the Avatar!” the Fire Lord flailed his hands about.

“Is an idiot. And he isn’t the Fire Lord, is he?” and she twisted her head slightly to the side, as if to confirm she was looking at the right person. When the Fire Lord in question did not respond, she prodded him in the chest with a knuckle. “You want to end this? Stop thinking like the Avatar and start acting like the Fire Lord.”

_Acting like the Fire Lord_ , he thought to himself. He spoke his thoughts out loud. “What is the Fire Lord supposed to act like?”

Lady Mai knew this as well as she knew her throwing blades. “Someone decisive. That’s how a Fire Lord acts.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he replied, looking at her, then looking at Druk’s visible eye, then looking at the not-so-distant encampment, then at her, then at the coastline, then at the sky. Each time, he hoped an answer, _Uncle_ , would show up and give him guidance.

Lady Mai rarely shouts. This is why her shout of “Come on, Zuko!” sent a shiver down his spine. She was thinking of how to stop him from doing something really stupid. She was also thinking of how to get through to him. 

“I don’t know what being decisive means! Every time I’ve ever taken a stance, it’s exploded in my face!” and he punched his fists upwards and accidentally launched a pair of fireballs into the sky. 

If Lady Mai could say her thoughts, she’d tell him ‘now is the time to start, then’, but for all she was mean, she wasn’t as sarcastic as another world leader might be. 

_What would Uncle do? He’d go to the General and try to figure out if he’d see reason or not. And if not, then… what was it he said about Azula? ‘She’s crazy and she needs to go down’._

_Well… she went down._

_I can’t kill someone. It’s still wrong. It doesn’t matter if Great-grandfather, Grandfather, Father and Azula did it. I won’t be the same Fire Lord as them. I won’t. The Avatar never has. I won’t._

As the Fire Lord tried to reassure himself of a fantasy that the Avatar and only those closest to him believed in, his Lady looked over at the encampment and rubbed some beads of sweat from her forehead. The thunderous artillery had silenced. The wave of green ants approaching the ascents to the mountain were hesitating. She thought back to the Royal Fire Academy. Unlike her boyfriend and all his tutelage, she still remembered her own courses in military planning. She recalled some, albeit basic for an Academy’s level of education, siege plans. She was no strategist, but it wasn’t hard to remember that all sieges require multi-threaded plans. The preparation, the bombardment, the wall assault, the fighting on the walls, the fighting in the courtyards, the attack on the central keep, and so on.

“Let’s go speak to General Fong. We might be able to learn what his plan for attacking is. We still have time to get him to call off the siege… if…” she put a finger to her chin, “...if we convince him we’ll fly up there and get the Daimyo to surrender. But-” and she pointed at the numb Fire Lord, “-we’re going to need to then do it.”

“What?” the Fire Lord responded, having been caught up in his own repetitive circular reasoning of _there must be a peaceful way_ and _if the Avatar doesn’t have to kill, neither do I_.

“Let’s go to General Fong. Now!” and she walked over to Druk. 

“What are we planning to do?” he asked, slowly trailing her. 

She would’ve exhaled smoke from her nostrils if only she were a firebender. Alas. “We’re going to. Convince him that will convince the Daimyo to surrender. No General wants to lose troops.” 

“I… are you sure this will work?” the Fire Lord asked, rubbing sweat off his head. 

She opened her mouth as if to say something, closed it, and opened it again. “It’s better than standing in a field.” The Fire Lord felt compelled to nod along and follow her lead. 

If this was back in Caldera, she’d have had her hands, feet and head chopped off for such defiance. As the great dragon lowered his wing to let Zuko on, and softly crooned, she wondered if she’d prefer what she knew of the Empire’s government, as they seemed to be far more lenient.

When in the audience of it’s monarch, the Zuko’s toe-picking female counterpart’s brazen attitude towards saying exactly what was on her mind to whoever she wanted to was viewed by the Royal Court -in quiet, they would never dare say it to her face- as inappropriate, and viewed by Lady Mai as something refreshing. As the Fire Lord snapped his reins and brought the great beast into the sky, she wondered if there was anyone she could contact about cross-cultural exchange. A person who knew the culture of the capital quite well. 

_If only such a person existed,_ she thought to herself, contemplating if she had the willpower to laugh at such a comical remark. She didn’t. Then she recalled that while a person may not exist, there was an organization that specializes in the culture of the capital. _The black coats. The Empress’s personal guards, the shadowy black coats, the ones who follow her every wish to their deaths. The Dai Li_. 

She made a mental note of contacting them.

By the time she was done with this thinking, Zuko brought Druk down next to the General’s personal pavilion. It was large and had a flag hung from a flagpole that doubled at the central shaft of the tent. The Earth soldiers got out of the way to avoid being crushed. Druk’s wing flaps threatened to rip the tent from its foundations and did rip the flag off it’s flagpole. The beast was twice the length of the General’s tent. 

General Fong stepped out of his tent, handed his warhammer to his second, and bowed to the Fire Lord. “Welcome back, Your Majesty! Would you like to have dinner with us?” 

The Fire Lord looked at him like he was making a joke with a punchline Zuko didn’t understand. Like it was some kind of Earth-people cultural thing. ‘We’re attacking? Nah, let’s eat.’

Because of his hesitance, it was his Lady who spoke up. “I thought you ordered a charge.”

The General laughed heartily, pounding his chest with his fist. “It’s sunset. We’re in no rush to attack!” 

_No rush to attack? That means… maybe I can get him to let me fly up there… and get the Daimyo to surrender._ The Fire Lord hopped off his dragon and bowed a royalty-to-soldiery bow back to the General. “May we talk inside…” he paused, wary of where his mind was going, _pleading_ , “... General?”

The General opened his arms wide, as if to embrace the man far gauntier and slightly shorter than him in a hug. Instead, he gestured to the tent. “Please, come in.” 

After helping his Lady off by offering her a hand, the two of them walked inside. Nobody was going to tell the large flying beast to ‘move’ since the little the Earth soldiers had heard of dragons was ‘don’t bother them’, to say the least.

“Fire Lord”, the block of officers rose, parted and bowed to the crimson-robed man as he walked by. ‘Your Majesty’ is a title they tend to only use for one person, for there is only one ‘Majesty’, and as the Fire Lord is not half a _hiro_ shorter, or an earthbender, or rolls around in dirt, or, most importantly, is a woman, he’s not it. 

_Do I bring it up now, or after dinner? Do I even eat dinner?_ The Fire Lord looked down at his plate of roasted turtle duck, the shell having been removed to allow the turtle duck’s meat to simmer in it’s own juices, and thought these thoughts. 

The other officers raised their goblets and toasted “to Her Imperial Majesty!” with everyone shouting “Ten Thousand Years!” followed by “To the Earth Empire!” with the mass reciting “Ten Thousand Years”. Finally, they raised their cups and said “To the end of the Hundred Year War, again!” which earned bursts of laughter from some of these men and their southwestern Earth continent accents. 

“What’s so funny about the ‘again’?” he asked some man with a thin short beard to his side, a man who looked like he could be his cousin’s age… _if Lu Ten wasn’t… gone._ He looked back down at the food to try and avoid thinking of memories of playing on the beach with the older boy. Didn’t work.

Thankfully, the man chimed in an answer. “Well, the War was declared over back at that Fire Nation capital o’er there-” and he hand-waved off to the southeast, “-right, Fire Lord? So… it was declared over, but-” then the officer made his voice boom, “-what’re we doing here, then?!?”

The rest of the room chanted “Hear, hear!”s. 

Someone yelled “We’re here to kill some Ashmakers!”. Another yelled “We’re here to penetrate some thick, thick walls!” and the officers cackled. Lady Mai thought that comment through and felt a shiver of repulsion. The Fire Lord had little wherewithal to pick up on the ‘nuances’ of the Earth Army.

A third voice belonging to a man, probably in his thirties, loudly asked “Why can’t this be someone else’s job? I wanted to go back east with the Empress! Didn’t you all hear, she’s got a party barge!” 

The Fire Lord, now thoroughly distracted, took to thinking about said woman’s supposed party barge while drinking some water. _Is she really the type to have a party barge? I thought she couldn’t see with her feet. And… wouldn’t her boyfriend… or… whatever that man’s title was, her bodyguard I guess, and his cousin, the Kyoshi Warrior, wouldn’t they be against party barges? And… isn’t that quite… odd for a monarch to have? Party barges are full of brothel-maids and brothel-gentlemen, and everything smells of alcohol and… what was it?... copulation_.

The Fire Lord opened his mouth. “Isn’t that quite unbecoming of a monarch? Sail around drinking and partying?” Lady Mai took her fist and rammed it into the Fire Lord’s back, making him spit out the water, while shouting “ _Zu_ ko!” 

“ _What?_ ” he snapped back. “You…” but even his girlfriend couldn’t produce a sentence. 

The entire tent was turning red, and it wasn’t from Lady Mai being pretty -which is what the Fire Lord involuntarily thought, since _he_ found her pretty. In a flash, these well-trained soldiers had their blades drawn and pointing at his and Mai’s necks. General Fong grabbed his warhammer and held it upright with one hand.

Then the Fire Lord went through what he had just said, _“Isn’t that quite unbecoming…” oh… Agni…_ . The Fire Lord slapped himself in the face. Not once. Not twice. Not thrice. But four times. He pinched his nose and groaned like a dying boar-q-pine. _I’m an idiot._

“Do you want to excuse yourself from the tent-” the General asked, leaning forward and looking the Fire Lord right in his good non scarred eye, “-Your Majesty?” 

_I am… so… sorry_. The Fire Lord shrunk into his seat. “I’m so… so… sorry, General. I’m-” but he was interrupted by Lady Mai, who’d finally figured out a good sentence to use. “He needs the company of a woman, General, without it, he… misspeaks… quite easily.”

“I understand.” Did he? Was he about to cave in the skull of the ruler of the second largest nation? No, he wasn’t. He simply laughed. “Fire Lord needs his woman! Just like the rest o’ us need ours!” and he pounded his chest. 

The Fire Lord had no idea what she was talking about. “What are you talking about!?” he shouted, leaning back towards her. Instead of answering, she got up, pulled him up by his collar, “Let ‘em go”, the General barked, and she dragged him out of the tent. Out, out, and over to the other side of Druk.

“ _Company of a woman? I don’t need a woman!_ I need to a-” but he was cut off by a kiss to the cheek. “Just…” she breathed, “...be quiet.” She knew it was a capital punishment in the Fire Nation, and she didn’t care.

“Why did you say something so stupid?” the Fire Lord asked the woman who just used the old ‘shut up kiss’ to shut him up. Except… it didn’t work.

“I could really ask the same of you, _Zu_ ko. And-” she backed off to look around at the no soldiers standing nearby due to the dragon’s swingable tail, only to lean back in and whisper “-it’s called diplomacy.”

“You lied,” he said, matching her whisper, thankfully for him.

“To save your skin. To save the Fire Lord’s skin” she whispered, pointed at the crown on his head. 

_I don’t care_ , he thought to himself. “It’s still a lie.”

“I’m just doing my part as a loyal citizen of the Fire Nation” she said with her usual unamused tone, but there was a hint of something enjoyable to be had. As if defending the Fire Lord, or rather, her boyfriend, was a fun little hobby of hers. Not that she’d admit it. 

_Lying is what Azula did. Uncle and Mother hated it._ “It’s a lie, Uncle would be quite disappointed in you for-” but he was cut off by Mai. 

“I don’t want to hear what ‘Uncle’ would do as ‘Uncle’ is not here. But you and I are.” and she took him by the arm and wheeled him around so he saw the tents, and the dragon, and finally, right into her tawny eyes. 

_But… Uncle. Uncle knows what we could do. Uncle is smart._ As if the whole international fail had never happened, Lady Mai went back to their previous discussion. “So, let’s go tell Fong we’re going to fly up to Feixi and try to convince Yin-Lee to surrender.” 

The Fire Lord looked at her like the whole international fail did just happen. “Weren’t we… talking about how much of an idiot-” and he caused his hands to turn red from accidental firebending “-I am?”

“We were, but we have more important things to talk about.” and she looked past up at the smoldering castle.

So… the Fire Lord tried to concoct an apology and request for permission in the same sentence. _Then General Fong will probably ask me to do something before he lets me fly off to build up my trust again, right? Because that’s what he’d do after I… insulted his monarch. I’m an idiot._

This was his resulting statement, given to the tent flap of the General’s tent: “G...General Fong? Hello, Zuko here! I’d like to go up to Feixi-jo… and see if they surrender!” 

The General opened the flap just a little, looked out from it, looking at the Fire Lord as he waved to the tent flap, at Lady Mai as she had her hands in her sleeves, and at his dragon, who appeared to be sleeping. “Sure, have fun.” 

_Oh._ In all his tutelage, the Fire Lord can never recall a time when a high ranking military officer would speak so casually to a fellow high-ranked person, save for his uncle. Lady Mai found the exchange quaint. In her mind, this was yet another reason why the Earth people’s culture has things to learn from it… abundant alcoholism is not one of them.

_Really?,_ the Fire Lord asked himself. _I… I need to ask him… I need his permission. I… I don’t believe it_. “You… you mean it?” and the sound of some kind of bone snapping, followed by intense sucking, could be heard. The General peeked back out of the flap sucking on a turtle-duck bone. 

Upon seeing the Fire Lord, still standing there, still awkward, the General took the bone out of his mouth. “Yeah. I mean it. I’m not your guardian, Fire Lord. Go… do whatever you want.” and he hand-waved the Fire Lord ‘away’ like he’d hand-wave a servant away. “You’re the Fire Lord, right? Fire. Lord.” and he pulled the tent flap behind him. 

The Fire Lord was stunned. Lady Mai was less stunned. She looped her hand around his elbow and dragged him towards Druk. The mount, being bonded with Zuko, woke when his master and friend neared. “Get on, we’re going Daimyo-stopping.” and she turned the Fire Lord away from the tent and towards his mount. 

“I… I don’t have faith in myself,” he said, accidentally speaking out loud. The dragon extended a wing out slightly to let the Fire Lord climb on the normal way. By instinct, he took Mai’s hand and helped her on.

Once on the saddle, he turned towards her. “I… don’t really have faith in myself,” he said, out loud, in the real world, admitting this. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose.

“I don’t really have that much faith in you either-” and she took him by the cheeks and gave him a reassuring kiss.

Love is a powerful thing. As is a knife-wielding unbreakable unamused girlfriend. 

The dragon took flight, off towards the castle that was half-smoke plumes and half-going-to-be.

Meanwhile, back in their tent, the Earth soldiers burst into laughter. “He’s so dead,” one of Fong’s assistants said, raising a cup of tea and drinking it.

“Probably. It’ll be a full moon tonight. If he’s not back by the start o’ nautical twilight, we'll tear that castle down, stone by stone if we must,” and Fong put his hands on the map.

“Still-” the General concluded, looked around at his fellow officers. “-the Fire Lord is so dead.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time, the Fire Lord parleys with a man that wants him dead.
> 
> They both like tea, though, so that's good. 
> 
> It's a race against the clock. Does Zuko save the people that want him dead from the people dying to help keep his throne secure?  
> Find out next time!
> 
> Notes:  
> -Zuko's perception is very skewed. Some (not all) examples below:  
> -Toph does not have a Imperial Party Barge, she just calls it that which means everyone calls it that  
> -Mori would not, in fact, mind if she called it that.  
> -She'd never bring aboard brothel-people.


	6. The Holdout Daimyo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Fire Lord tries diplomacy with Daimyo Yin-Lee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With this many kudos, I shall keep on!

Feixi-jo was a three tiered castle, built a hundred years ago. It took some three years for the last cushion to be placed in the Daimyo’s personal throne room. Ten years ago, the ailing Fire Lord ordered that the castles that guard the northwestern coast of the main island be refurbished and expanded, as he occasionally dabbled in insanity, and believed that invaders would sail out of the Sunset Sea and assail his lands.

The Royal Court may have called him mad behind his back, but the flame would burn all those who disobeyed. Daimyo Yin-Lee didn’t call him mad. No, he was happy to accept, as the construction was almost entirely subsidized by the Dragon Throne. 

_ The Sun Warriors, people of the Eternal Flame, they were called _ , the Fire Lord recalled.  _ I met them… when I went with Aang, I mean, the Avatar, to gain the secrets to firebending. Ran and Shaw judged us and told the Chief of the Sun Warriors to tell us something. No, not us, the Avatar was off playing with his new firebending powers _ .

_ ‘I am Buana, the last Calpixqui of Old Atzlan. But I am not the last of the Sun Warriors. Ran and Shaw have judged you as someone who can be trusted with this information.’  _ the Fire Lord thought back to how he went wide-eyed, but stayed quiet to let the older man speak.

_ ‘Beyond where the Sun dips into the western seas, there are islands. Long ago, the people of Atzlan were the first to tame and ride dragons. Out there, where your people have still not touched, out west, we are still numerous. Out there, beyond where the Sun dips into the western sea. We lost contact with them, but I believe they are still alive.’ _ Then and now, the Fire Lord was completely aback.  _ Land yet undiscovered? How? _

_ ‘I will defend your people, Chief. Can I have a map to sail to them? To visit?’  _ but the awkward speaker was loudly cut off from his monorail of thought by the Calpixqui.  _ ‘Your ancestors, when they kicked us off the Sunrise Island… we lost the maps to them. We swore, one day, we would return with our dragons and expunge the heretics. And yet, a Fire Lord from hundreds of years ago caught us first. He sent his ships… and that’s why this city is in ruin and we number in a few thousand _ .’ The Prince felt compelled to fall to his knees and bow in apology to the Calpixqui. So he did.

If this was the first man to come before the Calpixqui, then he would not accept the Prince’s fealty. However, he noted a similarity between this man and someone else, someone else who came to this island many years earlier. That man’s weeping was genuine, so too was this man’s. 

This is why the Calpixqui gestured for him to rise.  _ ‘You are truthful in your sorrow. Our people will not be quick to accept it. However, if you wish to heal the thousands of years of bloodshed, perhaps you can help us. _ ’

The Fire Lord fell to his knees again.  _ ‘Anything I can do…’  _ and he bowed as deeply as the lowliest peasant would bow to the Fire Lord _.  _

The Calpixqui nodded.  _ ‘Very well. There is another, the Icalaquimpa, they dwell in the lands of the Western Gate of the Sun. They live along a rocky tempest-ridden coast. Long ago, they warred with us. Beyond them rule the Tlateuctli, the Mountain Lords. We settled on their coast in peace. The Mountain Lords were very warlike. They raised an army as many as the stars to fall upon us and drove us back into the sea. Go west. Make peace with the Mountain Lords, and I will go west to find my brothers, so that we may make peace’ _ .

All of this was stored in the Fire Lord’s head, but the information was completely useless due to the War.  _ Go into undiscovered lands to make peace with a people we don’t know?  _ He sighed when thinking of it. He sighed in the present, when looking back from his dragon’s mount and towards the lights of the Imperial encampment.  _ We have enough trouble trying to convince the Earth peoples to stop warring.  _

As the Fire Lord’s dragon neared the large castle from high above, he thought back to a final note of irony.  _ Azulon was right. There were people out in the Sunset Sea.  _

He may have thought more, but he came to bring his dragon down on a small plateau located above and behind the castle’s  _ tenshu _ . He was going to wait here for someone from the castle to come up and meet him, it made sense in his head, but soon learned that there was no need. On said plateau -being part of a pig-goat path trail to the castle- was an outpost bunker. A low bunker, meant to help give the illusion of a mere mountain to any attackers from down below in the plains. 

The Fire Lord was the one to act, jumping off his mount and bowing to the stone bunker. A man dressed in the common Fire Nation soldier’s armor of a  _ Nanban-dou-gusoku _ with a spear emerged from the doorway. Druk turned his head right towards him, making the soldier stumble backwards in fright. “I’m here to talk to the Daimyo!” the Fire Lord shouted at the soldier. 

Then he turned to his side, “Druk, stay,” and waved his hand downwards, getting the dragon to lower his head in compliance. Lady Mai climbed off the saddle and joined the Fire Lord as he faced this bunker post. 

“I will relay the message to the Daimyo.” the soldier said, before grabbing an ostrich horse from inside the bunker and riding down the rest of the pig-goat path to the castle.

“Shouldn’t we go somewhere less...exposed?” Lady Mai asked, looking side to side as if to find a cave. 

“What’s the need?” the Fire Lord replied.  _ I asked nicely, didn’t I?  _ “I’m trying to be honorable. They’re my father’s vassals and his before him, they respect honor.”

“What if the people that want you dead betray you?” she whispered, her eyes squinting. 

“They won’t… because…”  _ because they respect… me… not burning them down _ . “...because they’ll respect me not burning them down.”  _ The Avatar does this all the time, right?  _

She took a long sigh. “Who taught you this?”

“The Avatar,” and he almost, almost, smiled at the mention of his friend. 

She had an involuntary reaction of “An idiot” because her experiences weren’t as biased. Afterall, she’d never travelled with the Avatar. She’d never travelled with his companions. She’d never gone on any harrowing journeys across the Western Air Temple. She’d never gotten on the wrong side of the Earth monarch, as unlike the Avatar, she didn’t walk around telling everyone how peace is a solution to problems. 

No, all Lady Mai had seen or heard of the Avatar is what she’d heard from New Ozai, and what’d she’d learned from gossiping courtiers, and what the commoners were saying about the young man. She heard that his aversion to a decisive strike against Ozai during that First Siege cost the Earth forces tens of thousands of men to do the Avatar’s job for him. All because the Avatar could not take a life and had no other solutions to knocking a master firebender out.

But the Fire Lord had very different experiences. He had those world-spanning adventures. To him,  _ the Avatar valiantly dueled Father during Sozin’s Comet. Even if he shouldn’t have, the Comet made Father much stronger than usual, he still did it. He did it and lost, but he did it _ . 

“The Avatar is not an idiot!” and he punched the air with his fists. “The Avatar is the nicest most altruistic selfless person in the world!” 

“Last I checked, altruism doesn’t protect you from crossbows. Or assassins.”

“The Avatar would have a solution to this.”

“It’s a good thing he’s not here, then,” she replied with a sarcastically unamused tone, akin to a woman busy checking her fingernails instead of paying attention. 

_ But… you don’t get to be so dismissive of him,  _ the Fire Lord critiqued. “The Avatar is off saving the world! It’s his destiny to do so.” “

“It was his ‘destiny’ to fight your father, but you and Katara also fought him because destiny doesn’t save people from death, and even then, all three of you were defeated.” Mai’s harsh words were her attempt to shake him up in the face of challenge. 

“If the Avatar was here, he’d convince the Daimyo to surrender” the Fire Lord said, assuredly. 

“Didn’t he try and convince your father to surrender?” she asked, genuinely curious. She knew the rumors. 

“He… did…” and the Fire Lord looked down at the ground, and took a deep breath. 

“He…” the Fire Lord didn’t want to recall these memories. “We were in the Palace, we’d gotten into the Throne Room… and father had the Imperial Firebenders waste our time.” His voice grew quieter and more sullen.

“Then… Azula showed up. And…” he choked up on his words. His trail off spurred Mai onwards.

“So the rumors are true. They wasted his time, right?” and she leaned her head towards him.

_ They wasted his time and mine…  _ “Yes,” was all the Fire Lord wanted to say. He didn’t even want to contemplate the things done that day.

“And then your father put a bolt of lightning through his chest.”

His shoulders slumped. “Yes.” 

After confessing to this, she grabbed him and gave him a quick shake. Along with the shake came her unusual, yet common, ‘attempting to make Zuko see reason’ tone. “So this is why you shouldn’t listen to the Avatar for these matters.”

_ But he’s the Avatar _ , the Fire Lord thought to himself, unable to separate his uncle’s praise of the Avatar from what was currently happening, or what the Avatar had already demonstrated. 

Soon enough, a pair of ostrich horse riders had arrived, dragging along an ostrich horse with them. “Fire Lord, you may park your dragon in the courtyard, or you may ride down with us.” 

_ If I bring Druk, he’ll scare all of them. I don’t want to scare them. I just want them to surrender.  _ He walked up to one of the ostrich horses, hopped, and swung himself on. Lady Mai gave him a questioning look, as if to say ‘what are you doing?’, only for him to turn around and start riding towards the castle. “I’m coming with you!” she yelled, racing after him and hopping on his mount. 

They came through a small gate, clearly a new addition to the castle, as it was made of local grey stone. Above it was painted the yellow five-petaled ring that the Fire Lord recognized Lord Suto as having. The men hidden inside the turrets to either side of the gatehouse watched with nocked, but not drawn, bows. Inside the courtyard, wounded were huddled under makeshift tents and under roofs and near the doorways to the retainers’ barracks. 

As the four of them rode up towards the  _ tenshu _ , he noted that the castle was extremely overcrowded. Recalling his tutelage,  _ a castle is only the home to the Daimyo, his family, his retainers, and sometimes their families _ . Instead, the residences of the retainers and structures reserved for aesthetic beauty or spiritual purposes were surrounded by canvas tents. What would normally be a tea shrine was now a hospital. A high retainer’s house that normally had cherry blossoms and pines surrounding it now had weapons stacked up against it. The blacksmith gained a dozen new apprentices. Normally, he remembered,  _ a castle has hundreds of trees planted in it. They add beauty and help with hiding parts of the structure from attackers _ . Now, most of those trees were burnt. 

He passed by a plot of land set aside for a high retainer, presumably whoever lived in the house attached to the small garden plot. It was now a cemetery. 

As he ascended up to the final level, he took note of who he was passing. Many of the soldiers still had baby cheeks. Others had so many wrinkles they looked like the rough bark of some trees. Children were carrying buckets of water, or spears, or helmets, around. The Royal Fire Army was renowned for its egalitarian practices, but far more of these soldiers were women than men.  _ Did they all already die? _ , he wondered. 

Only a few people noted his presence thanks to the twilight. The ones that did murmured “Fire Lord” underbreath. Everyone else was busy marching around, going from one duty to the next. 

Last, and far from least, the wafting stench of death danced with the scent of smoke in the air above them. It was on everything, on the clothes of the men and women he’d passed, turning the white houses grey, even the reins of the ostrich horse he was holding. Even after he dismounted at the entrance to the  _ tenshu _ . 

The Fire Lord tried to avoid crying. Every face he saw,  _ you’re all my citizens, even if your Daimyo is not. That is why I must convince him to surrender. None of you deserve to be punished for being in his castle instead of the next one down the road.  _ The Fire Lord looked at the twilight-stricken sky.  _ Avatar,  _ he thought to himself,  _ you would see this and make the Daimyo surrender peacefully. I will do it, too _ .

The Fire Lord was extremely confident that he’d stride right into the Daimyo’s chambers and convince the man to surrender. After all,  _ it’s his people that are suffering _ , the Fire Lord reasoned. He recalled the Avatar’s wisdom,  _ ‘if these people knew what’d happen to them and their families when they start a war, they would think twice about it. Nobody thinks about it, so I do the thinking for them.’ _ A doorway being opened cut his memories off.

At the other end of the large tatami-floored room, a bald man with a short black beard was sitting in the traditional kneel, with a plate holding a small bowl of rice and a cup of tea. The man was wearing a kimono and pants with the yellow five-petaled flower encircled in a ring appearing on either of his shoulders. His hair was done into a topknot. He spoke without looking up from his low gaze towards the tea cup. 

“Fire Lord,” he said it with a stern tone. 

_ How… How do I address him? He’s a traitor, but he’s also my vassal.  _ The Fire Lord had, thus far, never thought of how to engage in such a conversation. Because time progresses, even during one’s internal thoughts, the Daimyo went on with his talking. 

“Sit, Fire Lord.” Then he gave an additional order. “Attendant Hajime..., tell me, the Ishigaki merchant’s incense burns?” “It does, my lord” an attendant replied. “Good. Bring the Fire Lord... and the Fire Lady, two cups of tea.”

The Fire Lord looked at his girlfriend, who gave him a neutral expression.  _ Fire Lady?  _ If the title of Fire Lady made her blush, she didn’t show it.  _ But…  _ he staggered from the thought, as any teenager might, and in doing so staggered in front of the Daimyo. After recovering himself from this, he sat down on a cushion that faced the Daimyo. Lady Mai sat on a cushion to his side and rotated herself to face him and the main entryway. 

_ Ishigaki merchant? They sell incense? It’d make sense… he’s a Daimyo, so he’d be able to obtain it _ , the Fire Lord concluded. Lady Mai had no comment, instead watching the doorway.

“Prince Zuko, that’s all you were when we last met,” the Daimyo spoke while resting his hands on his knees. The attendant, the young man, Hajime, old enough to be the Fire Lord’s age, arrived with tea cups and placed them in front of the Fire Lord and his Lady. He bowed to both, then to his Daimyo, then went back to standing in a corner, waiting on his Daimyo’s next order.

“Daimyo… Yin, you were but the heir to Feixi-jo, when we last met, right?” and he leaned over and took a whiff of the tea.  _ Rich and sweet smelling. Just like Uncle’s tea _ . 

“Alas,” he spoke solemnly, “Kaede had just died. That made me the new Daimyo of the  _ shiro _ .”

“My condolences,” the Fire Lord said with full empathy.

“We all die, often before our time is up” he remarked, sipping his cup of tea.

The Fire Lord took the pause to contemplate.  _ It’s just me, Mai, some attendants, and him, in this room. This is the best time I can ask for surrender.  _

_ Grandfather would’ve already killed him.  _

_ Father would’ve besieged the city until the men and women rebelled against the Daimyo. _

_ Azula… would probably poison him… then zap him with lightning a few times, all while pretending to be surrendering. Poor Azula… if only you were around… I would be able to help you _ . 

He grabbed his tea cup.  _ I’ll drink first.  _ Nicely, and far from the rough tone a Fire Lord would normally be expected to have, he asked “Daimyo, let us toast?”

The Daimyo raised his head from his tea and looked across at the Fire Lord. “Of course” and he smiled. He raised his tea cup. “What shall we toast to?” As if honor transcends rivalries, he was slightly soft in his tone. 

“Z…” but the Lady cut him off. “Your Majesty, didn’t you already have a drink earlier?” The Fire Lord and the Daimyo both turned towards Lady Mai, who wasn’t holding her tea cup. 

“I… what?” the Fire Lord asked, confused.  _ I haven't had a drink for the past… since sunset. And the water was only a little. And I’m still feeling thirsty _ . “Your Majesty,-” she said softly, as if she was his lover and was trying to bring him back to bed, “-if you drink any more, your bladder will explode.”

“Mai!” he didn’t intend to sound as loud as he was. “I’m fine.” Then he turned to the Daimyo. “Forgive her, I haven’t had a drink since some water… earlier.” and he raised his tea cup. 

“A toast to peace!” the Daimyo shouted. His attendants joined him, shouting “A toast to peace!”. “Hear hear!” he added and began sipping the tea. Her hand swiped the cup from him while she watched the Daimyo. 

“What’s the meaning of this, woman?” the Daimyo asked, still in a kneel, still calm. “Yeah, Mai, what’s this about?” he asked half confused and half annoyed, as  _ she’s being hysterical _ .

“Save the tea until after he has surrendered!” she said in a louder than usual tone. 

“Right,-” the Daimyo spoke up. “-the Fire Lord came here to ask for my surrender, right?’. The Daimyo paid Lady Mai no attention, instead focusing on the man who was enjoying the taste of the tea on the back of his throat. 

_ Yes… I’ll… ask for your surrender now _ .  _ I’ll point out what I saw.  _ “Daimyo Yin-Lee, have you been outside your keep?” he asked with a confident tone, almost becoming of a young Prince, not a Fire Lord.

“I have been, Prince Zuko,” the Daimyo replied in a complimentary tone. Mai glanced at him, then back at the Fre Lord, then back at him, only to sit down next to the Fire Lord but facing him and the door. 

“So then you have seen what the siege has done to your men and women and children,” the Fire Lord reasoned.

“I have, Prince Zuko.” the Fire Lord’s face twisted into a frown every time he heard that title, but he also figured  _ this man can call me whatever he wants, he will have to surrender either way _ . The Daimyo rested his hands on the tatami and sternly said “I have seen the men fall on their blades when their wives die, I have seen the same from the wives, I have seen orphaned boys waddling around like confused turtle-ducks. I have seen the suffering.” 

“So you will surrender?” the Fire Lord asked, feeling a sensation, guilt, he imagined, building somewhere in his chest.  _ I should have gotten Fong to stop. Or… I shouldn’t have let the siege go on. I should’ve brought Uncle along instead of rushing over here _ .

“I don’t think I will, Prince Zuko. I swore my sword to your father, then to your sister, then to the Shogun.”

“I am my father’s son, Daimyo. I am my sister’s brother. I was once Crown Prince.” The last one made him look down at the floor in despair.  _ I was once… then he banished me,  _ the Fire Lord touched his facial reminder.

“You were once-” the Daimyo sat up straight and crossed the entire room with his glance, “-but that was once.” 

The Fire Lord felt an inner fire building inside him. He couldn’t explain it. He wanted to breathe fire.  _ But… over something as little as this, that doesn’t make sense… _ he thought.  _ So then… why? _ .

“I…” the Fire Lord coughed to catch his breath. “I am the Fire Lord, Daimyo. You must surrender to me.” He tried to sound confident and convincing, but instead came off as a meek person pretending to be. 

“I don’t think I will, Prince Zuko. No Daimyo will ever swear his blade to…” the Daimyo took a long deep breath, “...a puppet ruler.”

That was it. The Fire Lord shot up. “I am no puppet!” he shouted. That inner flame was building up. This scratching sensation,  _ it’s because of him saying what he said _ , the Fire Lord figured, was also building in his chest.

Calmly, he stated “Some dirt girl who’s barely had her first moon cycle comes strolling in and places you on the Dragon Throne.” and the Daimyo took another deep breath. “The very same dirt girl who killed His Late Majesty.”

_ Father… yes… father was killed by her. But he died, and had he not died, Aang, Katara, I, and most of the Earth continent would’ve burned.  _ This burning sensation grew more powerful. The implication is what set him off.

__ The Fire Lord walked over to the sitting Daimyo.  _ All wrong _ . “Tell me-” and the Daimyo finally looked up at the Fire Lord and looked him straight in his eyes. 

“-is a woman who sics her personal wolf-dog on whoever she doesn’t like, and violently decapitates anyone who gets in her way, is that someone who is a tyrant, Prince Zuko” and yet the Daimyo stayed on his kneel.

The Fire Lord felt a fever coming. “She is not a tyrant. She is…” but he didn’t know how to consider the answer.  _ She attacks any towns that aren’t under her control. But she also is the reason I’m even alive right now _ .  _ And she’s a woman of her word. When the Fire Nation, her own rivals, needed her aid to end the war, she didn’t just promise help, she personally showed up and brought the help _ .

“If you wish to call your father a tyrant, Prince Zuko, then you should really be fair.” and the Daimyo nodded at his own statement, as if to say ‘right’ at the end of the sentence. The Fire Lord felt his head and felt it sweating. That inner fire of his was picking up. He wanted to pull off his fancy Fire Lord’s robes and just… itch his chest. But he didn’t.

The Daimyo smiled. “Her blackcoats have killed more Earth people than all our invasions. Her blackcoats will hunt anyone who does not do her bidding down, and they will kill them all! Imagine if Her Late Majesty, Azula, her fire was so bright, so young, held sway over the blackcoats. Imagine!”

The Fire Lord’s mind started getting foggy. Even so, he was able to recall one of the few times he saw the blackcoats in action. The Daimyo, for his credit, stayed in his seat, calm. 

_ My first Royal Dinner. Most of those officials wanted me dead. I didn’t realize it then. But that… the Captain of her bodyguards, the Kyoshi Warriors, she did. And her cousin did. And they were inebriated. And they walked right up to me while I was playing Pai Sho, and they warned me. And they warned me. And then the officials drew their blades and… started stabbing all my guards… _

_...then the blackcoats arrived. They came out of the walls, they came from the ceilings, they sprung from every nook and cranny and hit the officials from a hundred different angles. That was the first time… I watched a person, a woman, get her neck broken by a rock glove. And others… they dragged the people into the ground… and… swallowed them. And they hung people in midair… and let them choke to death. And they shattered their heads and chests and legs and tossed the officials… my officials… flying.  _

_...then, later in the night, after the two of us discussed this… and I called their monarch ‘brutal’... I left my bedroom to grab a late night drink from the mess hall… and to find Uncle… and someone… someone somewhere… in the ceiling… called down to me. ‘You better watch your wording’, one of the voices said.  _

_ ‘It’d be really funny if you didn’t, but… hey, I digress’, the other, a higher pitched one, said.  _

_ And I looked up at the ceiling and asked ‘Who are you?’... only for the ceiling to shout back _

_ ‘I’m…Shan’ and the other voice ‘And I’m We… let’s go with Wu! It’s a pleasure to meet Your Majesty’.  _

_ ‘Remember, Your Majesty, the shadows always watch’, this… Shan said. ‘The shadows know,’ Wu added.  _

_ I thought it was a fever dream.  _

The Fire Lord’s chest tightened up. “I don’t care… The Empress isn’t a tyrant. And you… and you’ve got…” but he scratched his chest. “...and you’ve got to surrender.”

“Make me,” the Daimyo said. The Fire Lord’s inner flame was growing like a blacksmith’s fire.  _ My chest… I’m _ …

He grabbed the Daimyo with both hands and looked long and hard into the Daimyo’s face. “I’m… get up, Daimyo.”

“I will not, Prince Zuko” and he sat there, calmly, even while the Fire Lord held onto both his shoulders.

In the distance, the  _ taiko  _ sounded again. Not a few moments later, the sounds of explosions rocked the building.

Without thinking first, the Fire Lord yelled “I didn’t order that artillery!”.

The Daimyo laughed. “This is my proof.” and he nodded towards the most recent building-shaking rock. “Your dear friend is a tyrant. Her soldiers will loot, pillage, and do unspeakable things to my women.”

_ She’d never allow it. Her… whatever he is, her bodyguard… would never allow it _ . “They wouldn’t…” he gagged, “...they wouldn’t allow it. They never would.”

The Daimyo let out a sharp laugh. “Ha! That’s how war works, Prince Zuko. Do you need a lesson or two?”

The Fire Lord was now in a fever. The inner flame he imagined was getting so powerful his hands heated up.

“You must surrender,” the Fire Lord said in an newfound assertiveness. 

“I will die before I lower my sword to a tyrant’s army, or a puppet’s dictations. Every last one-” and he head-gestured the doorway, “-of my servants and soldiers, they know what awaits them. Each one-” he took a deep breath, “-is prepared to die.”

“You will have died for nothing…” and the Fire Lord broke that off with some coughs. He… he didn’t know why he was coughing, but he began coughing. 

“I will have died doing exactly what I wanted to do, Prince Zuko. I want to die for my values.” He smiled. “My death is upon me. And, considering your situation, your death will be upon you soon.”

The Fire Lord felt enraged. He tried to pick up the Daimyo, but he suddenly found that his energy was failing him. “Why… why am I… so faint?” the Fire Lord’s voice was shriveling. Lady Mai, having stayed at an angle that allows a knife-throw to the temple if needed, gave up on that and ran to her Fire Lord’s side. 

The Daimyo broke into a spittle-fueled laughter while the  _ tenshu  _ rocked from another artillery hit.

The Fire Lord suddenly felt a sensation he hadn’t felt in a long time.  _ I’m going to die.  _ That itching sensation in his chest was draining him of his life force. He attempted to grab the Daimyo and pick him up once again, but as the searing pain of what was happening got to him, his metaphorical flame became literal.

In a pain-fueled act, his hands were set alight and burned right through the Daimyo’s clothes and right into his skin. The Daimyo was dead by the time the Fire Lord had let go.

The Fire Lord collapsed onto the tatami. 

“ _ Zuko _ !” Mai shouted, lodging a knife in the head of the Daimyo while racing to, and grabbing, her Fire Lord as he collapsed.

Lady Mai is far less... nice... when compared to her boyfriend.

Simultaneously, the 'tyrant's' Imperial Commander of the Army of the West led an assault on the castle. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time, Mai isn't as nice as Zuko, and the Imperial Army's orders are executed.
> 
> If you liked what I'm doing, leave a comment!
> 
> Notes:  
> -Calpixqui is akin to a Duke, in this case I used it to mean 'Lord'  
> -Nanban-dou-gusoku is the armor Fire Nation soldiers wear in the series  
> -Shan and Wu


	7. The Siege of Feixi-jo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> General Fong attacks the Daimyo's castle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is from Fong's POV, with Mai's actions implied. Like an interlude of sorts. We'll catch up with her and Zuko next chapter.

**The Siege of Feixi-jo**

By Imperial Mandate, all who refused to swear fealty to His Royal Majesty will be compelled to. Each General took from this what they will, but one thing remained clear. This was the word of the ruler of the Earth continent.

Just as at Caldera, each officer competed in a game of one-upping the others in the name of the most heroic capture. Those thousands of men that died to bring the Fire Nation to heel? To some officers, that was a tragedy.

To General Fong… well it would’ve been a statistic, if he was even around to pay attention to it.

“So the Fire Lord ain’t back, men, which means…” General Fong dropped the head of his warhammer on the ground, cracking the stone floor, “... _ it’s hammer time _ !”.

The soldiers chanted “Fong! Fong! Fong! Fong! Fong!” as he got on top of his personal Imperial Tundra Tank, the so named  _ ‘Widowmaker’ _ .

“Sergeant Long! You hear me in that metal coffin?” and he tapped the armored turret with his hammer shaft. “Aye, General!” the man with the Omashuan accent replied. “Put ‘er in drive, and let's kill some Ashmakers!” 

While the tank’s engine fired up, he turned towards his soldiers. “You’re all going to be dead soon! Charge!”

The tanks around him fired up, a couple dozen  _ vrooms _ trying to out- _ vroom  _ one another. The  _ Widowmaker _ , unlike most of her peers, had handrails, so someone could hold on to the top while the tank throttles forward. That someone just so happens to be General Fong. It’s also got a warhammer holder, a hole in the armor for dropping the warhammer shaft in, just in case the rider wants to put his warhammer somewhere. 

One of the Kingdom, now the Empire's, finest exports is artillery. That’s not to say the artillery is very good, it isn’t, but what it lacks in competency it makes up for in quantity. 

Lots, and lots, of quantity. As the tank battalion drove up the mountainside, the artillery thundered and quaked, earth shells being sent flying overhead and crashing into the ramparts of the castle above them. Most shells were stone-filled, as the explosive stone shells had all been used,  _ read:wasted _ , in the prelude to the assault. Not that it mattered.  _ With ten shells falling every minute _ , General Fong thought,  _ they won’t be able to halt us _ .

Turns out, the General with years of experience, much of that in sieges, wasn’t wrong.

Sure, if this was a castle somewhere on the Earth continent, manned by half-decent troops, they’d replace the fallen walls with fresh earth ones. If this was a castle on the Earth continent, they’d be sapping the attacker’s positions with earth tunnels. If this was a castle on the Earth continent, they’d counterattack and build new defenses in an instance. If this was a castle on the Earth continent, the defenders would punch large rocks back at them.

A castle full of starved firebenders whose artillery was silenced long ago… isn’t any of that.

While the General wasn’t wrong, the Daimyo’s forces  _ couldn’t  _ halt them in a one-on-one fight, that didn’t stop them from causing him a few, as he’d chronicle it in his own report to How and the Throne, hiccups.

The first hiccup came at the base of the first tier’s wall. As his combined forces arrived below the gatehouse, enemy archers and firebenders loosed arrows and punched fireballs at his men. His officers, perfectly capable in their own right, ordered mantlets raised. The Empire’s infantry got behind these spontaneously placed pieces of cover, while it’s own crossbows and earthbenders assaulted the walls.

A castle is a force multiplier. An example of this is that an archer can become as powerful as ten while in the field. A firebender loosing fire blasts from cover can prove to be as useful as ten in the field. Except for one problem.

Fong long ago learned that the Fire Nation’s castles, their walls specifically, were built for countering Fire Nation assaults, with secondary purposes to stop ‘Water Tribe raiders and roving pirates from the Western Air Temple islands.’ Water Tribesmen, he’d heard, weren’t the best at siege warfare, mostly living in igloos and slaughtering defenseless Tribespeople along the North Earth Coast. And pirates may excel at the seas, or so he’d heard, but they weren’t that good at bringing their forces together to attack a castle effectively.

_ Fire Nation castles are made of stone _ .

Fong hopped off the  _ Widowmaker _ , slapped the ground with his heel, and sent himself flying upwards on an earth pillar. 

That one archer and his ‘force multiplier’ that was bugging these defenders were personally crushed by a warhammer head. With that done, Fong took after his monarch and brought his warhammer down on the wall, causing a rockalanche that he then surfed back down to the ground. With the wall open, his army could pour in like a green tide.

And, because he is an Imperial Commander, and must one-up everyone else in the name of looking cool, he ran along the wall and hammered it with his warhammer, bringing sections down and the firebenders crouched on top of it with him. When a chunk of earth crashed onto his head, he simply headbutted it out of existence. 

He jumped back on the  _ Widowmaker _ . She and the rest of the tanks used their large, spiked, tires, to bust right through the gatehouse and one-at-a-time flood into the first tier’s large courtyard. Simultaneously, the artillery ceased loosing shells and boulders, lest they hit the attacking Earth forces.

The Daimyo’s defenders were in tatters. Fong couldn’t place why, but he assumed it was probably due to half the houses being made up of craters and bits of house. And the houses that weren’t craters or rubble turned into holdfasts for the defenders to flee behind. The ones that did try to sortie?

Sergeant Long had the turret turn towards a selection of men and women carrying spears, a selection of men and women who thought to confront the Earth forces in a close-quarters melee, and Corporal Jie punched a stone shell out the turret. Said shell, and a couple of it’s peers, collided into the backs of the salliers. One shell combined with a woman’s head, another into a back, another hit the ground too soon and shattered, sending earth shrapnel flying in all directions. People’s heads were struck through with not-very-little pellets of earth. Their armor may have protected their backs from immediate death, but that didn’t stop them from the blunt force trauma.

Fong’s warhammer also makes for some blunt force trauma. 

He hopped off the  _ Widowmaker _ while she and her kin rolled across the courtyard, off to go demolish some houses, and attacked the backs of the defenders who were sallying and not yet dead.

He combined his warhammer with the side of one firebender’s head, then pulled the weapon back, raised it, and dropped it on a different firebender’s head. Some woman tried to stab him with a  _ dao _ , so he aptly pointed out “You can’t stab with a  _ dao _ ” before grabbing her by the neck, throwing her into someone else, and smashing her chest in with a warhammer. 

His men, well trained infantry with spears, shields and  _ dao  _ blades, formed a shieldwall. To nobody’s surprise, these soldiers did quite well. The peasants outnumbered this block of Earth-men two to one, and yet, their shields acted like a force negater. The defenders tried to slam shields with fire blasts, but as fire doesn’t set things alight in an instant, nothing happened. On the contrary, the shielded soldiers stabbed through their gaps with spears and impaled the men and women who thought to sally. 

While Fong back-hammered the sallying ‘officer’ in the face, his tanks crossed the courtyard and came across a little resistance. Most of that resistance was people trying to clamber onto the tanks and get inside. To counter this, the boatloads of cash poured into the Research and Development Department of the Earth Army installed hatch locks. The turrets couldn’t be accessed from the outside, so the small mob of militia weren’t able to do much beyond bang on the hatches and try to punch fire blasts down the tubes. 

One person stuck his hand into a tube, to try and cook the tankists inside, only for the artillerist to yell “Normal stone!”, the shell-carrier to load a regular stone shell into the tube, and the artillerist to punch said normal stone out. It hit the attacker so hard his arm and hand were removed from the rest of his person. At least his suffering didn’t last for long, another tank stuck him with one of it’s spiked tires before running the man over. 

Fong remounted  _ Widowmaker _ to progress onto the second tier of the castle. His officers spread out across the first tier, capturing everything and, when possible, accepting the surrender of civilians who voluntarily rebelled against the Dragon Throne. When not possible, a few earth boulders are a good enough reason for people to surrender. 

The second tier’s walls were manned with more firebenders and archers than the first. This time, instead of sending infantry up to pull out mantlets to counterattack from, Fong and a few other support earthbenders pulled pieces of the ground, then carved them into ramps. They were the perfect angle to shell the walls. 

Oncemore, while the archers could be a ‘force multiplier’, they couldn’t do much against metal-armored tanks launching shells. The smart ones saw this coming and ran for it. The rest tried to hit the earthbenders. Tried. The earthbenders had no reason to simply lose their intelligence once their purpose was fulfilled. They pulled walls of earth out and ducked behind them, dodging all the arrows. 

The  _ Widowmaker  _ and her kin tanks turned the second wall into puffs of smoke and lots of rubble. The tankists could launch a stone shell every half a minute, at most. The  _ Widowmaker _ ’s own Jie landed a direct hit on the head of some archer, removing her head. While they wasted most of their shells on killing all of fifteen defenders, Fong and the earthbenders cleared away what rubble they could. None of them were as powerful as the ruler of the continent, and as such couldn’t pave an entire pile of rubble at once, but they could pave parts of it. 

These siege ramps were shortly followed by the tanks revving up, with Fong shouted “Let’s hit the breach!” and pointing forward with his warhammer. His tank didn’t see him, and most tanks were busy looking around, but the idea was there. As such, a few tank squadrons -the rest were elsewhere, demolishing houses and people- rushed up the siege ramps and into the second-tiered courtyard. 

The Daimyo once had ballistas, trebuchets, and catapults. They were located along the walls, as only an idiotic commander would place his artillery in the field in a defensive siege. Not that it mattered, the near-limitless amount of earth artillery -they can launch chunks of the ground, and there’s lots of ground- had turned all the defensive artillery into piles of wooden debris. 

The second tier was empty, save for the dead and dying civilians lying under the awnings of the few remaining houses, or off in the gardens to the side of the main pathway. 

Their siege plan was to take civilians prisoner, where possible, so Fong left his infantry to do that job. That is except for when one civilian, some young woman, decided it was a brilliant idea to try and blast the tank-riding General. She punched a fire blast at him, it missed and hit his tank’s armor instead. He spotted this, and, instead of having his tank waste a shell on her, hopped off his tank, warhammer in hand, and charged her. 

The General took no time at all to swing his heavy warhammer around and caved her leg in. For extra potency, “I really, really, don’t like being hit by fireballs”, he brought his warhammer to the ground, hit the back of the head with an earth pillar, and whirled the entire weapon around like some kind of ‘hit the platform really hard’ carnival game… except her head was the platform. 

After caving in “some idiot’s” head, he ran back to his tank and joined the  _ Widowmaker  _ and the other tanks. This time, instead of waiting for the support earthbenders to skate over and make ramps, one such tank broke off to do it’s own thing. The tank drove up the long ramp,  _ a ramp designed to kill infantry that were approaching, except we have tanks _ , Fong thought to himself. 

The tank reached the rise where the gate laid, turned to the side, and launched a shell right into the gate. It busted a hole in the gate. When that didn’t work, and before Fong could show up and finish the job, the tank acted like a battering ram. A battering ram with a large engine.

The gate, it’s momentary defenses meant to shore it up, and a platoon of defenders standing behind it were crushed by the large vehicle’s metallic chassis. As it drove out of the way, a company of infantry poured into the third tier. Fong followed the well-trained mob atop his  _ Widowmaker _ .

The third courtyard’s main pathway to the  _ tenshu _ was too thin for a tank column. While Fong single handedly brought houses down with twirls of his warhammer, the rest of his men charged the gathered mob of soldiers, retinue, and civilians, all of whom had nowhere left to flee to.

The Earth forces brought their shields together and became all but impervious to the defenders’ fireblasts and arrows. When the Daimyo’s forces charged them with raised  _ dao  _ and screaming warcries… earthbenders planted within the Earth lines raised plates of earth to form earth walls. Then, they unceremoniously crushed platoon by platoon of the defenders. The ones that tried to clamber over the fissures and falling walls were picked off by crossbows. 

Fong dismounted and followed some of his soldiers around to a different part of the third tier. After killing the few standing ‘soldiers’ in their path, they ended up in a garden of some kind. A garden with a small land bridge separating two turtle-duck ponds. Across from them, a platoon of retainers,  _ clad in the same armor as that Lord Michio. Was that his name? Oh, whatever, he was a poor fighter _ . They were led by a man with more detail on his armor, or, as Fong groaned, “Not another one of you ‘I challenge you to a duel’ types.”

His men charged, and the enemy retainer leader charged. The retainer leader sliced two of his men’s heads open before another four spearmen impaled him in the head, neck, chest, and chest. His body slunk into the turtle-duckless pond on the right, then the rest of the retainers made their choice.

Some of them charged the attacking wave of greens, others took their blades and fell on them. The ones that charged were struck through by multiple spears. Once this little side track was cleared, with the only people left being the civilians, Fong ran back out into the main pathway. He ended up over by the  _ tenshu _ ’s entrance itself. 

Much to his disappointment, most of the soldiers and militia that saw the oncoming Earth army chose to take their own lives instead of getting killed. Not that he wanted more casualties than necessary, but  _ you’re a bunch of cowards _ , as he thought to himself. 

As such, he and a large number of fellow soldiers charged into the  _ tenshu  _ and started clearing it room-by-room. Nobody needed to yell any commands, as these were soldiers and were smart enough to know what to do without orders. His large force became smaller and smaller, not because of any enemies, but because they peeled off a platoon at a time to pacify the massive structure. Fong eventually ended up at the head of a twenty-man band. 

At one point, he noticed that the hallways in front of him were already cleared. Soldiers in full getup, with their faces or necks slit open. He thought  _ did we already clear this? _ , before remembering his group was the first up the stairs to the top floor. Besides, up until now, most soldiers he encountered had disemboweled themselves, then had their heads chopped off by fellow soldiers who’d voluntarily chose the same fate moments later. 

Eventually, however, he found his answer. One of his men blasted a door off with an earth pillar. He walked into a room only to hear a woman shout “Don’t attack us!”. He recognized the voice when it was more solemn and neutral, not when it was shouty and expression filled.

He spotted someone who looked old enough to be Daimyo lying on the ground, his body blackened and burnt, with a pool of blood on the tatami floor below his neck. Then he spotted a man who most certainly was the Fire Lord, lying on the ground. Finally, the person to match the voice, the Fire Lord’s lady, having just dropped a knife he assumed she was brandishing. 

He gestured for his men to stand down. The men backed away and let him approach the teenager. “Lady Mai. What happened here? Did your diplomacy fail?”

Then he realized she was crying. Her shouting “The Fire Lord was poisoned!” confirmed it. 

“And?” he replied, nonchalantly. 

“I need you to help me bring him to his dragon.” she barked at them.

The General looked at his men. Then he looked back at her. Was he going to be dramatic? No. “Sure. Men, grab the Fire Lord. Try not to drop him. We fought long and hard to ensure he got on the throne.” Then, the General laughed. “Just kidding, Caldera was pretty easy. No kill like overkill.” 

While his soldiers grabbed the Fire Lord and picked him up, Lady Mai asked, not as much of a shout now, “And what are  _ you  _ doing?” 

“Grabbing this Daimyo person’s head. Her Imperial Majesty would… wait no, she’s blind. I’m sure the One-Eyed Badgermole would like to see some traitor’s heads. So, if you’ll excuse me-” and the General placed his warhammer on the ground and took his subofficer’s  _ dao _ , “-I need a clean cut. The cleaner the decapitation, the better I look to the rest of the soldiers. It’s all about looking good, you know?” 

Lady Mai didn’t show the confusion she was feeling, but she watched while internally feeling really confused.  _ Why is he ranting about this? _ , she wondered.

The head was sliced off, then he handed it to his sub-officer. “Take that, bring it back to my camp.” “Yes, General.” General Fong pointed his finger at the officer. “In a bag. Find a bag.” “Yes, General.”

“Sorry, my Lady, I have to go kill some remnants,” and Fong grabbed his warhammer and busted down the wall to go that way instead. Before he went out of speaking distance, he stopped, turned, and addressed the Lady. “By the way, why didn’t the Fire Lord just use his dragon?” 

She collected her voice. She tried to explain the diplomacy as best she could. “Zuko sees the best in people, General.” The General laughed. “He’s going to have a fun reign, then.” Then the General walked through the wall. “Alas, not my monarch, not my problem. Good luck!” and he hopped into the room he broke down, the Daimyo’s bedroom, and worked his way towards the ‘remnants’, whether fictitious or real. 

The platoon of men assigned to transporting the Fire Lord’s body faced no conflict of any sort. The battle was winding down, pockets of resistance were being silenced or off silencing themselves, which left these soldiers with nothing to stab, slash, or otherwise pummel with earth. 

So they took to chatting amongst themselves.

Corporal Liu, world weary from the campaigns, began. “If the Fire Lord dies, do we have to find some illegitimate child to be the Fire Lord instead?” 

Private Deming, also tired, continued. “I don’t want to be on that campaign. I’ve seen enough volcanic isles.”

Liu, warily, inquired “But… will we?” 

Deming rolled his eyes, not taking Liu’s concerns seriously. “Maybe not, Her Imperial Majesty could just take the throne for herself then.” 

Private Guowei, a bit more creative than the other two, thought of an issue with this decision. “How’d that work? Empress of the Earth Empire and Fire… Lady?... of the Fire Nation?”

Sergeant Xue, formerly a shop assistant, presently holding the Fire Lord by the back of his neck, challenged the others with “Wouldn’t that make the One-Eyed Badgermole Lord Consort in addition to Emperor Consort?”

Liu, still world-weary, said “I thought he was just ‘Emperor’ with no ‘Consort’ addons. Or was I wrong, Xue?”

Xue clicking his tongue. “Nah, he was the Imperial Consort… before, right? Then she named him Emperor…” but he paused from uncertainty, “...right?”

“Something like that,” Liu, the right leg holder, replied. 

Deming, happy to do whatever he could do to ensure he’d get home to his wife Lanying, said “I’m in favor of ‘Earth Empress of the Earth Empire and Fire Lady of the Fire Nation.’” Then he looked to his side as if to address his peers, but only addressed the Fire Lord’s left leg. 

Xue, still curious of the logistics, proposed a problem with this. “Deming… when they have kids, won’t they have succession issues? Prince or Princess number one gets the Empire, Prince or Princess number two gets the Fire Islands? Then, what about child three, or child four? One island to each? Liu?” 

The other soldiers burst into laughter. “You’re a bit ahead of yourself.”

Xue realized why, namely the fact that they were still mere teenagers, and, at least publically, he figured, they showed little traditional affection towards one another. “I’m an idiot,” he concluded.

“Thanks for confirming it,” Deming said, half-tired, half optimistic towards the next boat eastwards.

All this time, Lady Mai kept her mouth closed to listen to these men. They were talking, and talking, and she knew that one way of obtaining information was through listening. She did lots of listening as a girl, her father ensured it.

Many minutes later, they were still talking, but their organic banter led to a changeup in conversation. Mai had to tolerate a few minutes of the soldiers discussing their girlfriends and wives, then a few minutes of what they’d do with said girlfriends or wives, namely take them out on dates, then a few more minutes of discussing Ba Sing Se. When they mentioned the Dai Li, that reminded her of her goal in contacting them.

She learned something new about the Dai Li that day. 

“So the man’s like-” and Liu deepened his voice, “‘- _ papers, please _ ,’ and I took out my papers and handed the invitation to him. He scans them with his hat, I don’t know if he had eyes, and he gives a big stamp. Then, his partner’s like  _ ‘Next!’ _ , and he gestures for me to get out of the way. So I do.”

While she had Druk lower himself and they helped put the Fire Lord’s body on his back, Lady Mai thought of how Caldera could really do with a system of passport checks like that. 

She took the reins of Druk, and the three of them headed southeast into the night sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time, Zuko convalescences, but the job of Fire Lord can't wait. 
> 
> I try to keep my battles realistic. In my mind, realistic outcomes>drama. That's why Fong's forces face almost no resistance.
> 
> Lots more references to 'Wacky Adventures' here. This time, of course, we don't get it from Mori (the Earth Emperor)'s POV, but from random Earth Empire soldiers.


End file.
